IN SPORTS: VETERAN LODI COACH STILL TICKING
Veteran Lodi swim coach still going with pacemaker
John Griffin monitored the Lodi High boys and girls swim teams in the first Tri-City Athletic League home match against West last Friday.
The Flames’ aquatics coach, who along with his wife Cindy have been coaching the program since 1982, talked to most of his swimmers after their events. He’s quick to applaud them for strong finishes. Griffin also coached swimmers on what improvements they should do in their events to help lower their times in preparing for the TCAL finals and the Sac-Joaquin Section trials and finals next month.
Business as usual for Griffin. But one thing added to the mix — he had major heart surgery toward the end of last month.
Griffin, who suffered a heart attack after a practice on Feb. 26, 2016, had a pace maker installed into his chest on March 29 that controls abnormal heart rhythms. The device uses low-energy electrical pulses to prod the heart to beat at a normal rate.
“My heart rate was starting to drop,” Griffin said. “Not beating the way it should’ve been. More beats now with the pacemaker.”
The coach was not going to let the surgery sideline him for this season.
“I’m a very competitive person,” said Griffin with a laugh.
Some minor coaching duties have been shifted among the Lodi swim coaches. Griffin has some of his duties performed by Cindy, along with Lodi frosh-soph coach Robert Elrod, who coaches the Lodi High girls water polo swim team in the fall.
“I need to back off a little bit,” said Griffin, who also runs the year-round Lodi Swim Club. “I don’t have to be front and center all the time.”
Griffin’s gusto to work with his swimmers is envied by both the school’s administrators and one of his former swimmers.
“Coach Griffin has always demonstrated great leadership characteristics, and has modeled the type of commitment and dedication to his athletes that all coaches strive to achieve,” said Lodi High Athletic Director Erin Aitken. “He has never asked of his athletes what he himself is not willing to do. Even during his own health crisis he continued to demonstrate the same fierceness and tenacity to overcoming difficulties that he attempts to instill in his athletes-that in itself is the consummate role model.”
Robert Watts, a 2016 Lodi High graduate who was one of the Flames’ swimmers earning a berth at the CIF Swimming and Diving Championships last spring, feels fortunate to have been coached by Griffin before and after the heart attack.
“He’s a phenomenal coach and person, said Watts, who is now attending University of California, Santa Barbara and majoring in psychology.
One thing that sticks out in Watts’ mind is a quote that Griffin echoed to his swimmers about life in general.
“You get out what you put in,” Watts said.
Last December, Griffin had a stent installed — a tubular support placed temporarily inside a blood vessel to relieve any obstruction. That was his second one, as the first one was installed shortly after his heart attack last year.
After practice with his Lodi swim teams on Feb. 26 of last year, Griffin walked to the school’s parking lot, where he felt a continued throbbing in the middle of his chest and felt nauseated. After Griffin arrived home, Cindy got behind the wheel and drove to their physician, but he was out of the office. Then the couple went to a nearby urgent care, where an electrocardiogram, which is commonly known as an EKG, was performed.
Griffin was taken to a hospital in Stockton for more tests. That’s where he and Cindy learned that he suffered a heart attack.