For Fitness, For Competition, For Life!

That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of Masters Swimming.

Catering to all levels of adult swimming ability, this nationwide organization known as United States Masters Swimming provides its members with local opportunities for swimming, for fun, and for discovery of new friends, new techniques, new drills, new thrills, like open-water or river swimming, or just the simple pleasure of swimming laps.

East Texas Masters Swimming

In May of 2007 I was fortunate enough to inherit the East Texas Masters Swim Team (ETEX). At the time ETEX was small group of devoted swimmers that had been hanging on by only four members willing to swim at the crack of dawn at the Boys & Girls Club of Nacogdoches. When I came into the picture I had no experience with masters swimming and no real understanding of what United States Masters Swimming or Gulf Masters Swimming was all about.

As a brand new aquatics director I had my sights set on opening our new Lufkin Swim Center facility and to help promote the new and existing aquatics programs that these two pools offers. Little did I know how each program could help build each other, Swim lessons to USA swimming to Masters Swimming to Water Aerobics.

The “Lezak Moment” and Masters Swimming

During the 2008 Summer Olympics, the swimming world-and much of the regular world-thrilled to the spectacular swim of Jason Lezak in the 4x100 freestyle relay. Lezak, trailing by a body length in the anchor leg of the event, saw the French swimmer in the next lane and was inspired to a final effort that brought his team victory. Any competitive swimmer at any level could identify with a race like this one. Lezak later described looking over and seeing Alain Bernard leading and having a little silent conversation with himself, at first mentally shaking his head in resignation, then convincing himself to try to win.

One of the wonderful things about Masters Swimming is that it brings this kind of excitement and inspiration, the essence of athletic competition, to everyone who competes in a Masters meet: We all have the chance to surpass ourselves because we can all see our closest competition challenging us in the very next lane, like Jason Lezak did.