Psaki’s dive from swimming pool to press pool
Dick Hawks was sitting alone at Cosmos Pizza in Norwalk Friday night, Nov. 18, 1994, something he did often enough that the staff reliably brought him “the usual.”
This time, they came over with something unusual. There was a call for him on the pay phone.
Members of Hawks’ Greenwich High School girls’ swim team knew his habits as well. In a few hours, they would compete in the State Open at Yale University. But they were still reeling from losing the Class L title to dreaded Cheshire three days earlier.
Jen Psaki was on the other end of the call with some teammates.
“Coach, we feel bad about letting you down on Tuesday,” Psaki told him. “We’re not going to let you down tomorrow.”
These days, Psaki is the star of the moment as President Joe Biden’s White House press secretary. In response to her adept handling of the press pool, she was recently challenged to navigate questions about swimming pools on NPR’s “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!”
It never came up that she is a swimmer. The topic “Take a Dip in This Pool,” is introduced by announcer and veteran newsman Bill Kurtis (who I met while working my way through college when I serviced, yes, his swimming pool).
Twenty-seven years ago, Psaki was a junior, but already proving why her teammates would elect her to be captain in her senior year.
The rivalry between Greenwich and Cheshire was so caustic that Hawks and his counterpart, Ed Aston, subscribed to one another’s local newspapers. Aston blew up quotes from Greenwich swimmers and posted them at poolside during practice to inspire his team.
Aston didn’t like something I’d written, so during the State Open that Saturday in 1994, he followed me up a stairwell and complained about the girls’ sportsmanship. It wasn’t my place to defend the GHS team, but I bristled at his comments given what I had observed. Out of professionalism, I held my tongue. It turned out I didn’t need to talk.
We were alone when the door opened behind Aston and six GHS athletes, Psaki among them, passed by and offered polite greetings to their rival: “Thanks Coach,” “See you next year.”
His diatribe was snuffed out.
I couldn’t imagine a more satisfying twist. But the Cardinals had another one, beating Cheshire for the state crown to end a nine-year drought. Psaki and her teammates tossed Hawks in the Yale pool.
“Hawks and Aston continue to have their differences, which they can work out on ‘Oprah’ for all I care,” I wrote in a column at the time.
I included an anecdote to illustrate the conduct of the Cardinals. Diving Coach Kristen Stanley listened in to Psaki talking about the meet and observed that she never mentioned herself, or Cheshire. It was all about her teammates.
Psaki was not the star of that lineup (that would be Chantal Rawn, the best high school swimmer I ever saw). But she was already a pleasure to interview. She said she was so happy “I don’t even know what I’m happy about.”
Cheshire’s role as villain was largely due to their dominance, akin to a New York Yankees or New England Patriots dynasty. Other athletes on the deck that day also rooted for GHS. One Weston swimmer asked if she could have a Cardinals swim cap if she beat her Cheshire competition. Psaki obliged.
Psaki also showed some of the playful grit she demonstrates in briefings. After the Class L loss, GHS boys’ swim Coach Terry Lowe teased her squad by telling his swimmers, “you guys better do better than the girls.” After the Open win, Psaki pledged “I’m going to tell Terry he can just deal with it.”
When I profiled Hawks two months later, he still had congratulatory notes from parents and athletes within reach in his Norwalk apartment. He pointed to one that thanked him for his efforts just before the Class L meet. It was a graceful missive, and just happened to be from Eileen Psaki, Jen’s mother.
“She’s a class act,” Katherine Didriksen Barone said of her former teammate.
Didriksen Barone was a member of the lineup that elected Psaki to be one of its three captains in the 1995-96 season. The pair also swam together for the Darien YMCA, where Hawks coached.
“She has always been a leader,” said Didriksen Barone, a former Stamford Advocate writer who now teaches English at Norwalk High School and has been a swim coach at Staples High School and the Ridgefield Aquatic Club. “She was captain for a reason.”
Didriksen Barone has followed her friend’s trajectory, which led to her tenure as White House communications director during the Obama Administration. “I guess I’ve sort of been waiting to see her get back behind the podium.”
When Psaki stepped back into the glare of the pool cameras, the first person to call Hawks about it was his old nemesis.
“I know that girl. She was in your team in ’94-95. She was a backstroker,” Aston said.
The call is even more surprising to me than the one Psaki made to Hawks at Cosmos 27 years ago. But then, I skipped the chapter where Hawks and Aston settled their differences. The rise of the New Canaan program changed everything.
“All we needed was a common enemy,” Hawks said with a laugh from his Redding home.
After Hawks retired from GHS eight years ago, he was presented with the 2016 National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association Outstanding Service Award. When it came time to choose someone to introduce him at the ceremony in Georgia, he called Aston.
“This was not the relationship we used to have,” he recalls Aston observing.
It’s the kind of détente we could use in the Beltway. Hawks’ review of Psaki’s work echoes that of much of the media.
“I’m very happy for Jen, but not at all surprised. She has the ability to handle things coming in from everywhere, while some reporters are trying to get under her skin. I’m amazed by her expression, by her tone of voice. She is so perfect for the position.”
Although we hadn’t talked in decades, Hawks is clearly still the same wiseguy he was in ’94.
“I’m delighted that Joe Biden was smart enough to grab her.”
Then he sums up her ethos up in a phrase that could fit on a motivational poolside poster: “No anger, no accusations, no lies.”