Academy’s Barney to retire as coach
At age 89, he will exit at swim season’s end
New Mexico’s most decorated high school coach, and one of its most beloved, is calling it a career.
Hall of Famer Dave Barney, who has led the Abuquerque Academy boys and girls swimming programs to an astonishing 41 state championships in his 47-year career coaching the Chargers in the pool, is retiring at the end of this season, the Journal has learned.
“Numbers are what people like to talk about,” Barney, 89, said Friday. “But they’re numbers. To me, (what’s most important) is the human interaction between a coach and an athlete, and that friendship extends long after kids graduate high school and go on to college. They’re in my heart.”
Barney will close out his long career at the Academy at next month’s state meet at the Academy Natatorium.
“I just sensed it was the time,” said Barney, who turns 90 in January. “Don’t have much fire left in the furnace.”
Barney has coached more than 400 All-Americans (athletic and academic) and is believed to be New Mexico’s oldest prep head coach. Academy has won state in more than
260 individual events and relays under his stewardship.
In July of 2015, Barney achieved his most prestigious recognition, as he was inducted into the National Federation of State High School Associations Hall of Fame in New Orleans. Only seven other New Mexicans have received similar recognition; Barney was just the third swimming coach in the country at the time to gain induction.
“You’d have to call it the top of the totem,” Barney, then 83, said in a Journal profile just before his induction. “This one spans across the whole spectrum of high school sports, and that makes it a little more special.”
Barney himself is a former swimmer at the University of New Mexico.
Academy has won 21 boys state titles under Barney, the last coming in 2017. The Chargers have another 20 championships with the girls, including the last four bigschool titles — and Barney believes Academy should be favored to win another blue trophy next month, which would give him a poetic-sounding 21 apiece with both genders.
“Nice irony,” Barney said. He began coaching the boys swimmers in 1982 after starting the girls program in 1975.
Barney in 1995 was the first girls swimming coach of the year as chosen by the NFHS. He also was inducted into the New Mexico Activities Association’s Hall of Fame in 2010.
He has been employed by the Academy, either as a teacher or a coach, since the fall of 1967. He retired from teaching English in 1995 after 28 years with the private school. His first coaching job with the Chargers was track and field.
Barney also is largely responsible for founding the Sundance Aquatic Association, the largest summer club program in the state.
“Whenever I think of Dave, I think of the Sundance program, because that leaves a huge legacy,” said Eldorado swim coach Quint Seckler. “It’s really because of Dave that that association started.”
Barney said the current COVID pandemic was not so much the driving force in his decision to retire as is his overall health.
“This is something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time,” he said. His overall coaching career began back in Michigan in 1960.
“Sixty years,” Barney said. “That’s a pretty fair career.”
The other seven men with New Mexico ties who are in the NFHS Hall of Fame are: Ralph Tasker (1988), Jim Hulsman (2003), Pete Shock (2011), Bill Gentry (2005), Tommy McDonald (1997), Ralph Bowyer (1990) and Mel Otero (1988).
Among his many individual awards, Barney also is a member of the New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame (1995), the UNM Athletic Hall of Honor (2000), the New Mexico High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame (2009) and the National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association Hall of Fame (2013).