Swimming Lessons

On the coldest day of the winter of 2019, with temperatures nearing single digits, Marshall University called off afternoon classes on campus. That word made nary a ripple in the Frederick A. Fitch Natatorium. The Herd’s swimming and diving teams’ cool-down period was a little more brisk than normal, but practice goes on. This team rarely stops thinking about the pool — or school — no matter how frigid it is outside.

That success out of the water was exemplified in January when the swim team was accorded All-American status. Marshall’s program was honored by the College Swimming Coaches Association of America as a Scholar All-American Team. It’s not the first time the swim program has earned that distinction. The baseline to attain recognition is a 3.0 GPA. Marshall far exceeded that mark with a 3.53. For the sixth year in a row, the Thundering Herd swim program held the highest GPA in Conference USA.

“All of us make it one of our personal goals to have a high GPA,” said junior Catherine Bendziewicz. “We hold each other accountable. Like I often say about the pool, it’s easy to do the same thing when you have everyone around you doing it.”

Bendziewicz has been at home in the water since she was three years old, learning to swim with her older brothers at home in South Carolina. She’s won 10 individual races this year in freestyle, breaststroke and individual medley events. Her swim career is playing out as she envisioned because she learned fairly early that a lifetime devotion to the pool could lead to something special.

“I think I was in the eighth grade and my coach sat me down and he said, ‘Catherine, you have to decide right now; you’re good enough that if you devote your time to this you can swim in college.’”

Ian Walsh took notice of her talent. He was an assistant at Marshall from 2013 to 2016 and recruited Bendziewicz to Huntington. He left the Herd to take an assistant’s job at Cal-Berkeley for a year and a half. Then the head coaching position came open at Marshall, and he dived right back into familiar waters.

“Our seniors now were freshmen when I was here,” Walsh said. “My first year as an assistant we were dead last in Conference USA. My last year, we were 17 points out of second place.”

There were personal reasons to come back to Marshall, too. Walsh met Sarah Davenport at Marshall when she was in grad school. They married and have a 7-month-old daughter, Ella, and wanted her to be closer to grandparents, aunts and uncles in the Huntington area. She’s a little young to hit the pool, but that’s likely just a matter of time.

“Mommy-and-me classes haven’t quite started yet,” said Walsh with a grin.

As the head coach, he requires an exacting regimen of his swimmers. It’s a demanding sport where time-management skills and laser-focused dedication are necessities, whether swimming for a personal best or studying for your next test. There’s very little down time.

“I kind of put the road map together, but they walk it, they live it,” said Walsh. “My goal is they walk out being more confident young women, and whatever life throws at them, they have the ability to handle it just like they do here on a daily basis.”

At the deep end of the pool, Megan Siford is settling in as the new diving coach. She’s originally from Toledo, Ohio, so these temperatures don’t faze her. She came to Marshall from Tiffin University in Ohio. She described her job change as “definitely the first big jump of my career.”

Siford dived competitively at Youngstown State University and knows the drill of perfecting the craft. The degree of difficulty in this sport dictates that repetition is key.

“It can be frustrating at times, but once the light bulb clicks it’s like A-HA!” said Siford. “It’s just repetition after repetition and practicing and trying to get those corrections made.”

Madison Young has spent much of her athletic career airborne. Her first love was gymnastics, and then she changed course to diving when she was a sophomore in high school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Hers is a sport that defies gravity and challenges the limits of athleticism. Anyone who’s ever tiptoed out to the end of the board to try a new dive knows that it takes a great deal of courage to take the leap. For a seasoned Division I diver, it becomes part of the process.

“I think it’s fun; you kind of get adrenaline from it,” Young said of trying a difficult dive. “You practice it a lot of different ways before you try it in competition, so most of the time it’s not that scary. Repetition is the best way to get comfortable.”

Comfortable enough that Young was named Conference USA diver of the week three times this year. It becomes obvious the more you talk to the swimmers and divers that they haven’t spent thousands of hours in the pool just to make it to the podium. They don’t lead the league in GPA just for the plaques and ribbons that denote such accomplishments. That recognition is noteworthy. But this is all aimed at a deeper dive ­— one that results in success after they come out of the competitive pool. It brings to mind that commercial about NCAA student-athletes: “There are over 360,000 NCAA student-athletes, and just about all of us will be going pro in something other than sports.”

“Whether you’re a swimmer or a football player or a volleyball player, your sport is done eventually,” said Walsh. “Even if you go pro, even if you’re like a Missy Franklin (five-time Olympic Gold Medalist swimmer), swimming is done and diving is done at some point. We want them to be able to walk away and have a great experience and a degree.”

Swimming lessons, well learned. 

Keith Morehouse is the sports director for WSAZ NewsChannel 3 in Huntington. A 1983 graduate of the Marshall University School of Journalism, he is a regular contributor to Marshall Magazine.