What is your swimming lineage?
Your swimming lineage describes when and where you started to swim, where have you trained since, who have you trained with, and what coaches have you trained under. Similar to your ancestral lineage, it outlines your successive line of coaches, teammates, teams, and places where you have trained, swum, and/or raced.
Narrative
My own swimming lineage dates back to Santa Monica Beach in 1962 and continued to Huntington Beach in Southern California in my teenage years when I trained under Olympic coaches Jim Montrella and Jon Urbanchek. It continued in the Charles River in Boston during my college years when I trained under Olympic coach Joe Bernal and English and Catalina Channel record holder Penny Dean. My post-collegiate swimming lineage ranged from Ala Moana Beach and Waikiki Beach in Honolulu to Lake Biwa and Ajigaura Beach in Japan as a young adult, with a final return to Huntington Beach in my 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.
Along the way, I competed up and down the California coast in ocean swims from La Jolla to Oceanside to Carlsbad to Newport Beach to Huntington Beach to Seal Beach to Long Beach to Hermosa Beach to Manhattan Beach to Santa Monica Beach to Malibu Beach to Zuma Beach as well as Aquatic Park. While I DNF’ed on my first marathon swim in Huntington Beach, I picked up the pace and did marathon swims in California, New Jersey, Quebec, Canada, England, and Japan, and officiated, organized, coached, or volunteered in races in Spain, Italy, England, Germany, Japan, Australia, Tahiti, Fiji, Brazil, Mexico, Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Tunisia, Greece, Switzerland, and France.
Add water polo, bodysurfing, lifesaving, and triathlon competitions throughout many of those younger years in addition to the six decades of open water swimming – and I have spent a lifetime along shorelines, lakes, rivers, and on pool decks.
Swimming Lineage
| Age | Location | Coach | Team |
| > 12 years | Santa Monica Beach | Bob Gaviglio | — |
| 12-14 years | Naples Island, Huntington Beach | Jim Montrella | Lakewood Aquatics |
| 14-17 years | Seal Beach, Huntington Beach | Jon Urbanchek / Klaus Barth | Beach Aquatics |
| 18-21 years | Charles River, Seal Beach | Joe Bernal / Penny Dean | Harvard / USA Swimming |
| 22-26 years | Ala Moana Beach, Waikiki Beach, Oahu | self | Waikiki Swim Club |
| 27-34 years | Ajigaura Beach, Lake Biwa | self | — |
| 34+ years | Huntington Beach | self | — |
Swimming DNA
Your swimming lineage is different than your swimming DNA. Swimming lineage is developed and the result of your initiative and interests.
Your swimming DNA is your unique aquatic blueprint that determine your physiological traits (i.e., anthropometric measurements including your height, weight, wing span, size of hands and feet, build, and body shape), your psychological characteristics (i.e., your emotional state, sense of adventure, and degree of tenacity, patience, drive, competitiveness, vision), and your emotional makeup (i.e., your inherent temperament, disposition, and self-confidence).
All these impact your success in open water swimming.
If you cannot change your physical composition, we can still improve our mental make-up – no matter what our ge.
Because swimming is such a cerebral sport, your thoughts and feelings can significantly impact your physical outcomes. That is, we are alone with our thoughts and internal conversations with ourselves when we swim. Because we cannot talk or listen to others while swimming, our visual cues and perspectives are extremely limited. We become immediately self-aware of changes in our bodies and the sensations we feel.
In an aquatic twist to the famous philosophical statement of French philosopher René Descartes, “I swim, therefore I think.”
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