Showing how it’s done
Yuma Heat swimmers witness Kofa’s Van Voorst destroy Grady Garrett in 50 free
Sports editor’s note: This is part seven of a series where I compete against Yuma-area coaches at their sport and write about the experience.
My first thought as I entered the Valley Aquatic Center Monday morning was that I hoped the place would clear out quickly. Some probably 50 kids were in the pool, with numerous parents on the side waiting for the Summer Heat practice to end. I was there to race Kofa and Yuma Heat swim coach Mark Van Voorst in what would be the first “competitive” swim race of my life.
For Van Voorst, this was just another summer day in the life of a swim coach. This — a 7:30-8:40 a.m. session for the Yuma Heat’s youngest swimmers — was the second of four practices on his slate for the day. He’d shown up at the crack of dawn to coach the older group, and still had 11:3012:45 and 8-9 p.m. practices to come.
Van Voorst and I, right
after the practice ended, would be doing a 50-yard freestyle race — probably our only option, given that I don’t really know how to do any other stroke.
I knew I would lose, but had no idea by how much — because unlike the other coaches I’ve gone against in this challenge, I wasn’t familiar with Van Voorst’s background.
I’d learn that Van Voorst is very comfortable in a pool. He swam growing up, and in high school in the northern San Diego area, he was a successful swimmer and water polo player — two sports he went on to do in college, first at Palomar College and then at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
His top events growing up were the 100 back — his best was a 56.1, he specifically remembers — and the 200 IM. Asked what he could do the 50 free in back then, he noted that he “was not a sprinter as much as mid-distance,” so probably around 25 seconds.
Well, I’d realize 25 seconds was very fast compared to the times we were about to clock.
Van Voorst is entering his seventh year at Kofa. That’s also how long he’s been in Yuma; before that, he lived in various places including Lake Havasu, Lake Tahoe and the Florida Keys. He hasn’t always been a swim coach — he’s coached everything from chess to robotics to a little softball/basketball/ baseball — and hasn’t always been a teacher like he currently is, either.
He got his degree in computer science and business management, and has previously worked for construction companies and also as a professional pilot.
“No matter what I’ve done there’s always been that education part of it,” he said. For example, “I always had more fun teaching people how to use computers and the software than I did actually doing the hard wiring and stuff like that, and same with flight instructing.”
Now he’s focused on teaching kids in the pool.
“I love to get in the water and show (kids),” Van Voorst said. “I think having a strong swim background is really beneficial for any coach, but especially for swimming where primarily it’s about technique. The fastest way to go fast is to swim right, in addition to physical fitness.”
So Van Voorst relished this opportunity to swim in front of the kids he coaches, which is why he brought the group together to witness the race. He didn’t explain that I was from the newspaper, leaving the kids to find out for themselves who I was and what the heck I was doing there.
“I’ve never swam a race before,” I explained to a few kids as we were getting ready to start.
“So do you know how to use the starting blocks?”
No. I would be jumping in (not diving).
“Do you know how to flip turn?”
No. I had no plan for how I was going to make the turn.
With each answer, the looks on their faces grew more and more skeptical of me. One boy, 10-year-old Andrie Boyko, took particular interest in my lack of a swim background.
“Have you ever at least been to a water park and gone down a slide?” he asked.
That I had done, but at this point I think he was mostly just making fun of me more than searching for an answer.
And shortly after that, we were off.
I can’t, for obvious reasons, recount Van Voorst’s performance like I’ve been able to assess other coaches’ performances, because my head was buried in the water most of the time — in fact, I believe a mistake of mine was that I didn’t come up to breath nearly enough the first 25 yards. Because on the homestretch, I found myself gasping for air and just hoping I’d finish without having to break into some sort of doggy-style/breaststroke variation.
Fortunately, I was able to finish — in 50 seconds, a whopping 28 seconds slower than the fastest 50yard freestyle time posted by a Yuma-area high school swimmer last year (Gila Ridge’s Talen Osborn, 22.27), and 13 seconds slower than Van Voorst (37 seconds) on this day.
As I got out of the pool, one the kids — Boyko — asked where I was from. “New York?” he asked. He thought I’d flown it from somewhere just to show off that I could swim the 50-yard freestyle in 50 seconds.