Competitive swimming began in Illinois high schools during the 1890s, but to an observer today it would not even look like the same sport. The swimming appeared slow and dull. The fast-paced crawl stroke, used in the present-day freestyle races, had yet to arrive in America and Europe. Instead, a variety of arm strokes and leg movements were practiced by the swimmers, and any of them could be used in competition. In some long-distance races swimmers would change willy-nilly from one stroke to another, some of which were most peculiar.
Long the most common swimming technique of the day was the breaststroke, which involved a froglike kick of the legs and an double sweep of the arms forward and back underwater, and many swimmers were still employing it for long races. It was the basic stroke first taught to all swimmers. For short races competitors traditionally relied on the sidestroke, also called the "single overhand" or "overhand sidestroke" because it involved one overhand stroke into the water and a scissors kick with the legs.
By the mid-1890s, a new stroke was sweeping the swimming world, the trudgeon stroke, devised by an Englishman, John Trudgen. (Despite the spelling of the inventor's name, the stroke was commonly known as the "trudgeon".) The trudgeon was also called the double overhand stroke, and like the crawl the swimmer brought the hands alternately over and into the water. It was an awkward stroke. With the head kept out of the water and use of the scissors kick a swimmer was forced to roll his body from side to side.
The back stroke, like the crawl, was unknown in the 1890s. When swimmers swam on their backs, they would use an inverted breast stoke, so to speak. The swimmers themselves did not look at all like competitive athletes, revealing little upper body muscular development and exhibiting a soft flabby unathletic look in distinctive contrast to the strong builds of swimmers of later eras.
Competitive swimming in the 1890s was obviously in its infancy. But a revolution in the sport would occur in the next decade, when youthful athletes would prevail and when swimming and training would be conducted far more scientifically. But the groundwork for this revolution was established in the 1890s when the Chicago Athletic Association (CAA) and other amateur clubs began their youth programs and sponsorship of swimming in the high schools.
Most all colleges and secondary schools of the day did not have swimming pools. Thus, few ever attempted to organize teams during the 1890s. High schoolers if they were swimming at all were participating as representatives of clubs and not their high schools. The CAA besides their regular team had what they called the CAA Juniors, swimmers of grade school and high school age who were not advanced far enough for the regular team.
The CAA knew that for swimming to grow as a sport it must work to develop interest in it among the younger generation. In the 1897 national outdoor meet, for example, the club sponsored a 100-yard schoolboy race. In the winter of 1898 the CAA inaugurated its Juniors swimming and water polo squad. The squad played a few polo matches, twice against local high school teams, from English and from Hyde Park. Each match took place on "ladies day," when the CAA opened its doors to the lady friends and wives of their members and put on a variety of shows and contests for their enjoyment.
In July of 1898, there was a meet called the "First Annual Amateur Swimming Carnival," conducted by the Chicago Swimming Club, held at the Salt Water Natatorium, 60th and Cottage Grove. The meet featured a variety of adult and youth events, notably the first interscholastic race competition held in Illinois. In an 80-yard race for "school boys," most of the participants were members of the CAA Juniors, but for this event each swimmer raced under the banners of his school. The winner of the race was Arthur W. Goetz of English High, who with his brother Hugo would later swim for Armour Academy. Taking second and third respectively, were Wallace Foote of Manual Training and Fred Weiland of North Division, both of whom were members of the CAA. Weiland would emerge as a top amateur swimmer after the turn of the century.
A water polo match at the Carnival pitted the CAA Juniors against a team representing Hyde Park High. The CAA team was basically a high school all-star aggregation and easily beat the Hyde Parkers. Some of the schools that had members on the CAA team were South Division, North Division, and Manual Training.
The Chicago Swimming Club meet, with regard to interscholastic activity, could very well have been a one-time thing, because an examination of the available newspapers and yearbooks produced by the local high schools at the time show no recognition of swimming or water polo after 1898, except at Hyde Park High, which continued to field a water polo team — but not a racing team — for the next three years.
Only after the turn of the century does interscholastic swimming activity come into view again, and at first it's practically all water polo. In February of 1899 Hyde Park played a match against the CAA Juniors team, which included David Hammond, William Tuttle, Fred Weiland, and Arthur Goetz. All except Weiland would go on to participate in the 1904 Olympics. The following year, in March, Hyde Park played the Armour Academy in a match at the pool of the CAA, and in April, Oak Park High played the second Junior CAA team. The CAA saw the fostering of water polo as a way of developing new strong young swimmers. Reported the club's journal, The Cherry Circle, in 1900: "Since the CAA started an interest in the game of water polo among the schools of the city there has been a rapid development of fast, strong swimmers among the boys of junior years."
In 1901 saw the formation of the Interscholastic Water Polo League, which adopted a schedule for March and April that included teams representing both secondary schools and amateur clubs. The secondary schools in the league were Armour Academy, English, Lewis Institute, Oak Park. and Austin; the amateur teams, Naval Reserves and CAA Juniors.
The CAA around this time had reduced their participation in adult amateur swimming as part as a general retrenchment from fostering and sponsoring of athletics. The club continued to maintain a junior swimming team for the benefit of the children of its members, however, and continued to foster swimming in the high schools. The Olympic Games of 1900, which was held in Paris, did little that year to arouse interest in swimming in Chicago, partly because of the CAA's absence from the amateur scene.
Only partially filling the gap left by the CAA in swimming, the Central YMCA started a strong swimming program involving many young members and the Illinois Naval Reserves formed an athletic contingent that included many former CAA members. The Central YMCA also supported a high school, and many of the members of its junior team were students at the high school.
Raising the visibility of interscholastic swimming as well as swimming competition in general in the Chicago area, at least for a couple of years, was the Sportsman's Show, a large extravaganza conducted by the International Forest, Fish, and Game Association and held in Chicago for only two years, 1901 and 1902, at the newly completed Coliseum. The Sportsman's Show had in the preceding years appeared in New York City, and in 1903 would move to Cleveland. It combined an exhibition of fish and game sports with various athletic contests and was instrumental in the promotion of aquatic sports in the Chicago area. These aquatic sports were water polo games and racing contests for amateur clubs, high schools, and YMCA teams, plus exhibits of fancy diving. Other sports competition at the show included basketball, fencing, wrestling, indoor baseball, and roller polo. The local papers provided extensive coverage of the show, the Tribune devoting almost a full page of its broadsheet.
For two years, 1901 and 1902, the Sportsman Show arranged to have an interscholastic water polo championship. Armour Academy, led by future 1904 Olympian Hugo Goetz and his brother Arthur W. Goetz, won both years. Less conspicuous in the 1901 show were the racing contests for high schools. Armour Academy was apparently the only secondary school to submit individual entries and took both of the individual races (each won by a Goetz brother). The school faced competition in the relay race, but won it easily. In the 1902 high school relay championship, North Division bested Armour Academy and Lewis Institute. English High and Hyde Park were eliminated in the preliminaries. However, as was typical of secondary school athletics of the day, the event was marred by squabbling and charges of cheating. North Division was found to have an ineligible swimmer and Armour Academy was given the title.
Interscholastic aquatic sports were not sustained after 1902, and the Sportsman's Show was not there to help sustain them. Without the presence of the show only North Division felt compelled to field water polo and relay teams. It sent a team to Cleveland to compete in the 1903 show, but the newspapers took no note of how North Division performed there. For the several years high school age swimmers in the Chicago area who wished to compete in swimming had to do so as a member of an amateur club or a YMCA.
With the eminent opening of the Olympic Games in St. Louis in 1904, the CAA was aroused again to participate in amateur sports. It rejoined the AAU in May of 1903, and in early 1904 formed swimming and water polo teams as well as a track and field team with the intention of training them for the Olympics. The Naval Reserves competitors flocked back to the CAA. The Central YMCA team under coach Frank Sullivan also competed in the Olympics. Sullivan, who was one of Chicago's great innovative coaches, was also a champion in the underwater plunge, a peculiar event of the day in which a swimmers would compete to see how far each could coast underwater after a dive.
The 1904 Olympics proved to be particularly rich in Chicago-based swimming talent, but little of it was developed in any of the high schools. The secondary schools of origin for 1904 Olympic medal winners and CAA members David Hammond and Frank Kehoe, for example, are unknown.
On relay silver medalist Hugo Goetz, we know the secondary school, Armour Academy, only because his institution was the most active secondary school involved in water polo. Other Olympians of whom we know their secondary school are water poloist and backstroker Edwin Swatek (Central YMCA HS), relayer Raymond Thorne (University High), and breaststroker H. Jamison Handy (North Division). Swatek was a member of the Central YMCA squad, the most competitive team next to that of the CAA. Thorne had just finished his junior year in high school when he won his silver medal, and was racing that year as a member of the CAA Juniors squad. H. Jamison Handy never swam for his high school, even though his school fielded a team when he was a student there.
The year 1905 saw the emergence of the modern era in American swimming, the use of the crawl stroke. America's top swimmer of the day, Charles M. Daniels, of the New York Athletic Club (NYAC), dropped his trudgeon stroke in favor of the crawl. He perfected the crawl technique by increasing the number of kicks to each arm stroke, and rapidly regained his preeminence, breaking every record in sight. But the New York dominance would not last.
Already in 1905 swimming competition was resuming in the high schools, when early in January North Division, Crane, and Hyde Park competed in a Central YMCA meet. The meet featured two of Central YMCA best young swimmers, H. Jamison Handy, who in the meet set a world record in the 40-yard backstroke, and Edwin Swatek, who set a world record in an odd event called the underwater plunge. Swatek swam the last twenty feet "practically unconscious," and not long after the event was discontinued because of its danger.
Chicago was developing new young cracks who would soon dominate the swimming world. H. Jamison Handy became the first great swimmer produced in Chicago. He was originally from New Jersey, and came from a family of journalists. After graduating from North Division at age 16, he attended University of Michigan, but was expelled after one year for writing an offensive story on a Michigan professor for the Chicago Tribune. Upon his return to Chicago Handy joined the Central YMCA swim team coached by Frank Sullivan. Handy won a bronze medal in the breaststroke in the 1904 Olympics and was a world record long-distance freestyler and an innovative backstroker. He was a small fellow, under five foot nine, and weighing only 140 pounds, and had to compete against men well over six feet tall and weighing over 200 pounds. He had to use brains over brawn to compete.
Handy fortunately for him possessed one of the great analytical minds of the swimming world, and because of that became one of the premier crawl strokers of all time. As a measure of his talent, in November of 1905 Handy competed in a 600 yard freestyle race at the Evanston YMCA pool. He was timed as he completed each length of the 20-yard pool, and at the end of the race he had set thirteen world records and five American marks. But as extraordinary as this achievement was Handy was not satisfied. He was still getting beat in head to head competition against the great Charles Daniels. He set about to change that, as related by Clarence Pinkston of the Detroit Athletic Club:
"It was then that Jam used his genius for analysis to figure out a method that would make the current crawl stroke more efficient. At that time the champs breathed by holding their heads up facing straight forward — a few swung their heads back and forth, from side to side. Jam worked for secret for six months on his idea of exhaling under water as the head was turned to the side for a breath coordinated with the arm pull. When he faced Daniels for the 1906 National AAU 800 championship, no one anyplace in the world had seen the crawl stroke as we all know it now, and Mr. Daniels saw very little of Jam Handy as he walked away with the championship easily. Within a year every top notch swimmer in the country copied Jam's revolutionary idea."
H. Jamison Handy is an obscure name today, which should not be the case according to Pinkston, who said, "it is hard for me to figure out why the biggest contribution to the development of the American crawl has been missed by the many writers on the subject." Handy left the Central YMCA team and joined the CAA team in 1907, but when the IAC opened its pool in the fall he and the YMCA coach, Frank Sullivan, went to the IAC. Handy, however, after a couple more years of record breaking swimming dropped out in 1909 to build a career in the business world. He returned to swimming occasionally to participate in water polo contests, and was a part of the IAC teams of 1914-17, 1921, and 1923-24. In 1924 he competed on the United States Olympic water polo team at the age of 36.
Handy in his swimming career demonstrated remarkable achievement in three different strokes — crawl, back, and breast — which he has justifiably has earned recognition from swimming historians. A notable swimming official, Lawrence J. Johnson, remarked on Handy: "During the period of his competition from 1906 through 1909 he was the greatest all-around swimming champion our country had ever known and since that time no swimmer in our country or in any other for that matter has ever attempted or equaled the record in all strokes and distances that Jamison Handy left on the championship books."
Handy was an example of a young swimmer developed before high school competition had been firmly established. Such competition would begin in 1906, when the first meets in Chicago solely for high schools were held, notably one authorized by the Cook County League. Participating schools were Oak Park, Lake View, Hyde Park, McKinley, and Phillips. There was little swimming activity in 1907, and after Oak Park won the Cook County title for the second year in a row, the League opted not to continue to authorize a meet. Part of the problem in developing an affiliation of high school swimmers with their own high schools was that practically no high schools possessed a swimming pool, but gains after 1906 were slow but steady.
The Illinois Athletic Club (IAC), founded in 1904, would play a major role in the coming years in fostering swimming in the secondary schools. After opening its club house on Michigan Avenue with its beautiful classically designed swimming pool in 1907. the IAC began an ascendancy in the swim world that would supersede all other private and public swim organizations in the Chicago area, as well as the world.
In February 1908, the IAC, well aware that the future of swim competition lay with the youth, inaugurated an annual interscholastic meet. It attracted eight schools — Evanston Academy, Oak Park, Crane Tech, Lewis Institute, Evanston High, Hyde Park, Lake View, and University. Evanston Academy, led by Robert Foster, narrowly beat Oak Park 17 to 16. Foster later in the summer, as the youngest member of the U. S. Olympic swim team, at age 17, competed in the 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle and the 200-meter relay freestyle. He did not place, however. Foster was developed at the Evanston YMCA under the tutelage of Tom Robinson. Another star of the meet was Perry McGillivrey, then a sophomore at Crane Tech, who set a national high school record in the backstroke with a new "push off" technique (which was soon universally adopted).
The following year, McGillivray (now also a member of IAC) almost singlehandedly led Crane to the championship, but the school was edged by Evanston High. The third annual meet featured another great new talent, freestyler Kenneth Huszagh of Lewis Institute. During the meet he not only set a new high school record in the 40 yards, he set a new world record. His record broke that of the most famed swimmer of the era, Charles M. Daniels. He also set a national high school record in the 100 yards. Huszagh also fouled on the relay, which cost his school the championship, which was won by University. Subsequent meets were dominated by such early swim powers as Evanston, Oak Park, New Trier, Lane Tech, Hyde Park, and Englewood.
The work of the Chicago schoolboys in particular in 1908 set off signals in the swimming world that prep swimming had arrived. In a wrap-up of the year in the Chicago Tribune, Frank Sullivan noted: "Most notable of all has been the remarkable development of schoolboy swimming that has multiplied by six or eight the total number of America's registered swimmers and has given us scholastic records equal to the country's best of a few seasons ago. Swimming always has been a young game, supported best by youthful physique, but never has this point been so well illustrated as by the 16 year wonders of 1908. In every large city, high school leagues have been formed; the Illinois Athletic Club interscholastic has been initiated as an annual feature, and New York has had a schoolboy meet with listed over 200 entries in a single event."
The year 1910 proved to be a breakthrough year for high school talent, both in the level of achievement and the attendant public interest in schoolboy swimming. Much of this interest was stimulated by the work of William Bachrach, who was swimming coach at Central YMCA at the time and was promoting high school meets and developing high school talent at the institution. A Central interscholastic meet that year featured three future 1912 Olympians — Huszagh, McGillivray, and newcomer Michael McDermott of Lake High. Bachrach's promotion of schoolboy swimming accelerated when he joined the IAC as swim coach in March of 1912, taking his star swimmer with him, Harry Hebner.
Bachrach as coach of the "world's greatest swimming team" in subsequent years was elevated to legendary status as each year IAC swimmers and water polo players took every title and regularly set national and world records. He weighed 350 pounds and with an ever-present cigar and huge beer belly he looked like a German butcher. Although he was a competitive swimmer in the 1890s Bachman was never seen in the pool. It was humorously rumored that he hated water, and some wags expressed doubts that he could swim.
By the second decade of the century high schools had become almost equal partners with the athletic clubs in sponsoring swim competition. In 1913, when the Cook County League broke up into the Suburban League and the Chicago Public League, both new leagues adopted swimming as a recognized sport. Bachrach particularly hailed the Suburban League, home of swim powers Evanston, New Trier, and Oak Park. Related the Chester A. Foust of the Record Herald, "Coach Bachrach of the IAC believes the swimming league organized by the suburban high school officials to be the biggest boost the splashing game has been given in a long time. He says that the league will develop some more stars for his team, although at times the 'dad' wishes that there was some other club in the city capable of offering strong competition to his family of champions."
An Intercollegiate Swimming Guide published in the midst of World War I contained an illuminating report from one of the pioneer high school swimming coaches, Chauncey A. Hyatt, of New Trier, the first high school in the Chicago area to have a pool. Said he regarding the 1915-16 season, "In the Middle West there has been a steady development of swimming in the secondary schools. Each succeeding year more swimmers have been developing and previous performances bettered. The development is due to several reasons, but probably the most important one is the fact that boards of education are beginning to consider natatoriums just as essential as gymnasiums and nearly every new high school has one included in its plans. Several school built several years ago have added swimming pools and are recognizing aquatics as part of the high school curriculum." Hyatt went on to list 14 schools in Illinois and Indiana that had swimming pools, among them besides New Trier were Maine, Senn, Schurz, and Harrison.
A not unrelated fact in the same issue there was a list of eleven high school national records, and of that number Chicago schools held five of them; New York schools, one; New Jersey schools, one; and Massachusetts schools, four.
A look at three of the IAC greatest champions of this period — Hebner, McDermott, and McGillivray — will reveal what a formidable championship team the organization produced during the second decade of this century. Their achievements demonstrated the tremendous payoff that the swimming coaches of Chicago gained from working with the youth of Chicago. One can also see the emerging role of that the high schools were beginning to play as one moves from Hebner, McDermott, and McGillivray.
The career of Harry Hebner is instructive of how prior to around 1908 the public high schools were not yet producing swimming talent. He was born June 15, 1891, and by the age of 15, in 1906, he was competing in high school events as a representative of the Central YMCA Junior team. The following year he broke out as one of the top Chicago swimmers, competing for the regular Central YMCA team having never competed for a public high school. In all probability he was attending the Central YMCA high school.
Hebner made his debut on the international swimming stage came in 1908 as a 17-year old member of the 1908 Olympic team. Four years later, in Sweden, he won a gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke and a silver medal on the 800-meter freestyle relay team. At those games, Hebner proved himself as one of the great swimming revolutionaries with his introduction of the "crawl backstroke." The first impulse of the officials, who were used to seeing an inverted breaststroke style of backstroke, was to declare it illegal. But after some conferring, and finding nothing in the rules to ban it, they allowed Hebner to use it. All competitors soon adopted the new stroke.
From 1910 through 1917, Hebner swimming for the IAC held all the world backstroke records and held the AAU national championship in the event for seven consecutive years. In 1914 Hebner broke six individual records in the freestyle and backstroke, and that year was hailed by New York future Hall of Fame coach, Louis de Breda Handley, as "the greatest all-around swimmer in the world."
In 1911 IAC water polo teams began a decade of dominance in the sport. Hebner captained the IAC water polo team, and with McGillivray invented the "lob" shot. Said H. Jamison Handy, who thought Hebner deserved Hall of Fame status purely for his water polo skills, "it was as a versatile water polo player that he excelled. I never saw his equal in ambidextrous handling of the ball. He had a good backhand, forehand, and sidearm delivery from either hand. He was good at flicking the ball vigorously form either wrist and sometimes passed that way as a guard was taking hold of his forearm. It took a brutal guard plus a lax referee to smother him." Harold Dash, a long time water polo player on later IAC teams, said "Many of us who played water-polo later used techniques developed by Heb." In 1920 Hebner participated in his last Olympics as a member of the water polo team. He was the standard bearer for the U. S. team in the opening ceremonies.
Hebner died in 1968, and he is honored today as a member of the Helms Foundation Swimming Hall of Fame and the International Hall of Fame.
Michael "Turk" McDermott was born around 35th and Wabash on the South Side of Chicago, January 18, 1893, one of eleven children. McDermott attended two south side secondary schools, first Lake High and later a parochial school, DelaSalle Institute, but it was not in high school that he got his swimming background (he competed in one meet for Lake). Early on his father sent him to a pool at 60th and Cottage Grove, where William Bachrach was an instructor. Later he followed Bachrach to the Central YMCA when the famed swimming coach was installed as instructor there.
In late 1909 McDermott left the Central YMCA to join the CAA, and as a member of the that organization he won his first national titles. In 1912 he helped the CAA win the national AAU championship, but by following year had joined the newly dominant IAC squad rejoining his old coach, Bachrach. For the remainder of his career McDermott swam for the IAC, setting national and world records at the long distance races and the breaststroke. He won the national AAU indoor breaststroke championship nine years in a row, from 1910 to 1918.
McDermott participated in the 1912 Olympics in the breaststroke, but failed to win a medal, which was no surprise since the Europeans traditionally prevailed in the event over the Americans. In a tour of the continent after the games, however, McDermott beat the German champion, Walter Bathe (appropriate name!), three times. In 1916, when McDermott was at the height of his fame and skills, he was deprived of the chance to become a star in the Olympics, as the games were canceled as a result of World War I. His swimming career was interrupted by the war in 1918, when he served his country as a naval aviator for eleven months.
McDermott's greatest fame came in long distance swimming. He won the Missouri Athletic Association 10-mile Mississippi River swim four times, 1911, 1913, 1916, and 1917. For winning the race the third time, he won a large 1,000 dollars silver cup, which was prominently displayed by the IAC for many years. McDermott used a "combination of crawl and breast style" in his long-distance races, the pure crawl then being considered too taxing for long-distance open water races. He was also a key member of the IAC water polo team, playing on teams that won national championships for four years straight, from 1914 for 1917.
McDermott participated in one more Olympics, in 1920, as a member of the water polo team. McDermott died in 1970, after being selected for two hall of fames, the Helms Foundation Swimming Hall of Fame and the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Although he is virtually unknown today, McGillivray was one of outstanding swimmers in the history of the sport, who was a champion as a middle and long distance freestyler, a backstroker, and a water polo player. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, July 24, 1893, of apparently modest background, judging from the secondary institution he attended, Crane Tech. The institution was a trade school in an increasingly working class immigrant neighborhood on Chicago's near West Side.
In McGillivray's first year as a member of the IAC, in 1910, he won the annual Chicago River marathon, one of the premier swimming events in the city during that time. He subsequently won it three more times. McGillivray's benefitted from the IAC training under Frank Sullivan. Said the IAC magazine, "Sullivan developed McGillivray in use of the 'Sullivan crawl'"..."His arms reach out and bent at the elbow and catch the water hard, a little above the head, without excessive extension. His legs perform a narrow thrash, six beats to every double arm stroke, and his whole action is rhythmic. He advances smoothly and without check, shoulders pretty high over the water, and by riding on the hand which is forward he obtains a good run between strokes. His form is almost faultless."
In 1913, McGillivray originated a technique in swimming that is now taken for granted, the underwater turn. Reported the IAC magazine in a report on a race, "A decided novelty was exhibited by McGillivray in turning. Instead of pushing off on the surface he sank down several feet, then started thrashing his legs and came up with a great flourish of speed. The result of this turn was obvious in the recent events. McGillivray hung for a second behind his 'surface-shooting' rivals on swinging around, then came up with a dash and passed them. It was noticeable that he started swimming sooner than the others."
Sullivan went on to coach at Princeton and in 1912 McGillivray came under the tutelage of Bachrach, who further honed the swimmer's skills. McGillivrey was a member of the silver-medal winning 800-meter freestyle relay team in the 1912 Olympics, but his best years were ahead of him. Had there been an Olympic Games in 1916, McGillivray would have gathered an armful of gold. He still had enough skills for the 1920 Olympics, where he served on the 1920 water polo team, and shared in a gold medal as a member of the world-record breaking 800 freestyle relay team. McGillivray was an innovative water polo player and with Hebner invented the lob shot.
By 1920, the IAC had hailed McGillivray in these glowing terms: "It is no stretch of imagination or exaggeration to state that McGillivray is the greatest swimmer the country has ever known." Even given the IAC own chest-thumping, there would have been strong case for that assessment in early 1920. Between 1908 and 1927 McGillivray won 16 AAU individual national titles, was a member of 13 championship relay teams and seven championship water polo teams. During that time he set nine world records in various events. In 1928 this great competitor coached the United States Olympic water polo team.
McGillivray died in 1944, sadly too early to receive the acclaim of being elected to the Helms Foundation Swimming Hall of Fame and the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
The IAC continued to produce champions up through the 1920s, but increasingly the swimmers came to the club with reputations already earned as members of their high school teams. In the midst of World War I, the IAC helped develop Arthur Raithel (of Crane) and Max Mott and Bill Vosburgh (both of Oak Park). And after the war the IAC found top swimmers in Davey Leslie Jones (of Harrison), Abe Siegel (of Hyde Park), Robert Skelton (of New Trier), and Ralph Breyer (of Lane Tech). Other swimmers around the country saw what the IAC was accomplishing and moved to Chicago to join the team, notably Norman Ross, from the West Coast, and Stubby Kruger, from Hawaii.
The IAC did not grab all the high school talent. Some national interscholastic record holders during World War I were Emil Vacin of University (in the breaststroke), and Mason Olmstead of Evanston (in the underwater plunge). Other early standouts were Ralph Huszagh of Evanston Academy (brother of Kenneth), Phillip Mallen of Latin, and Hugo "Hooks" Miller and Floyd Town of Lane Tech. The CAA, the Avis of the Chicago swim world, managed to grab the Huszagh brothers, Olmstead, and Mallen.
Meanwhile, during World War I, Bachrach started working with female swimmers, and although his success was not nearly as great as with the males, it was considerable. His most notable protege was Sybil Bauer, whom he discovered swimming for Schurz high while as a freshman. He brought her on his IAC team and soon she was setting national records in the backstroke. In the 1924 Olympics she easily overpowered the field and won the 100 backstroke. Another of his proteges was Ethel Lackie of University High. He brought her on his team and in the 1924 Olympics she took first in the 100 free style and was a member of the first place 200 freestyle relay team.
By 1920 Bachrach was getting virtually all his Chicago area talent from the local high school programs. There was one peculiar exception. The swimmer was a high school drop-out, who probably never spent more than a year at his school, Lane Tech, and never swam on its championship swim team. He was basically a beach bum, who hung out at the Fullerton Avenue beach. What early formal swimming training he picked up was at the Stanton Park Pool and the Larrabee YMCA. He also spent a few months at the Hamilton Club, but found its program unsatisfactory. A friend from Lane Tech, Hugo "Hooks" Miller, suggested he try his club, the IAC. When the 16-year old recruit stepped into the IAC Bachrach saw a raw gangling awkward youth. When he jumped in the pool, Bachrach saw a future world champion. Johnny Weismuller, the world's greatest swimmer, became Bachrach's greatest find ironically just when athletic clubs were beginning to fade as producers of swim talent.
From 1908 to 1919 the IAC schoolboy meet was simply called the Illinois Athletic Club Interscholastic, and was usually held in the first thursday in December. Afterwards the meet was called the Illinois Athletic Club Cook County Interscholastic to distinguish it from the national meet that the IAC inaugurated on the first Thursday of March, 1920.
The IAC's national tournament never amounted to much and was always dominated by local schools, because the few out-of-state schools mostly from Michigan, never poised much of a challenge. Invariably though every meet featured some national interscholastic records being broken, such was the high level of swim competition in the Chicago area. For example, in the 1922 meet, although there was only two out-of-state schools in the meet, Dick Howell of Hyde Park broke two and tied one national interscholastic records. The tournament reached its height in prestige in 1926, when Lindblom with the national record-breaker Dick Peterson spearheading the team garnered inch-high headlines. In its last years the tournament wisely dropped "national" from its name. In 1930 the meet was discontinued, as most of the high school swim powers by this time had their own pools and the private athletic clubs were getting out of the sponsorship of high school events.
Beside the IAC. the preeminent universities of the day also conducted swimming meets for high schoolers. The earliest and most prestigious national swimming meet for secondary schools was the National Interscholastic conducted by the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. It was founded in 1902, but it was not until the second decade of the century that other universities, mostly on the East Coast, began sponsoring interscholastic swimming tournaments, notably Princeton, Yale, Rutgers, and Columbia. Some of the universities claimed national status for their meets. In 1914 Lewis Omer, athletic director at Northwestern University, added a swimming interscholastic to be held the same day as the indoor track and field meet that had been held the last weekend of March since 1910. During the first years of the swimming tourney the competition involved mostly local schools, but when it resumed after the war years in 1921, the tournament advertised itself as a national interscholastic. It fully secured this status when true national powers such as Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Wilmington, Delaware, won the tournament four times during the decade.
The University of Chicago had been sporadically conducting swimming tournaments for area high schools as early as 1906, but it was not until 1925 when it established a meet in the third week of April called the Cook County Interscholastic that the school provided a sustained tournament. In 1927 the meet was moved up to the second week of March, and in 1928 up to the second week of February. Beginning in 1930 the meet was held the second week of January. By 1928 the tournament had changed its name to simply the University of Chicago Interscholastic while still limiting its field to area schools. The last meet was held in 1933 and surprisingly the largest ever, with 20 schools and 130 swimmers. The University of Chicago meet was one of the last hurrahs for university sponsorship of high school athletics. In 1932 the IHSA inaugurated the state championship meet in March, and the focus thereafter for high school swimmers was on the state meet.
The sponsoring activities of the IAC and the universities served to produce outstanding swim talents throughout the 1920s, and Chicago area high schools broke national interscholastic records regularly. Edwin Lennox of Oak Park, a protege of Bachman, set a national interscholastic record in the breaststroke in 1923 and won alternate position on the 1924 Olympic team. From the preeminent swim factory of the day, Lane Tech, came Ralph Breyer who was a member of the United States' winning 800 freestyle relay team in the 1924 Olympics. Dick Howell, who while at Hyde Park in 1922 broke the national interscholastic 100 and 220 free style records and led his school to several titles, also swam in the 1924 Olympics as a relay member.
By the 1928 Olympics the Chicago area had lost a little steam, and Weissmuller was the only swimmer from the area to win any medals. A Lane diver, Walter Colbath, however, took fourth in the platform dive. Marshall's Albert Schwartz, another Bachman protege, took every title in sight as a schoolboy as well setting a few national records and won third place in the 100 freestyle in the 1932 Olympics. Robert Kerber helped make Maine a national power in the late 1920s, set a national interscholastic record in the 220 freestyle, and took a sixth place in the 100 backstroke in the 1932 Olympic Games. Arthur Highland, who made Schurz a swim power in the late 1920s and set a national interscholastic record in the 100 free style, swam in the 1936 Olympic Games.
Other top schoolboy swimmers from the 1920s were Hugo Miller and Donald Petersen of Lane Tech, Haulton Blankley of Senn, Robert Baskind of Englewood, and Warren Hobdy of Lake Forest Academy who set a national 100 backstroke record in 1925.
The role of Illinois schoolboys in the development of world swim competition has not been fully appreciated. It is true that swimming is a sport that could produce an exceptional champion just about anyplace in the world where one could find an exceptional natural athlete. But swimming is also a sport that produces exceptional athletes out of a particular swim training culture. Improvements in swim competition is largely a process of scientific training and learning, conducted through the development of new techniques and revolutionary strokes, and most of all by rigorous repetitive drills.
The cornerstone of that kind of training culture in Chicago was in 1890s and the first decade of the next century the big city athletic club, and competitive swimming as it emerged could come from no other place. Such places provided a swimming pool, which was a rarity in the 1890s, and a professional trainer, which was even more of a rarity. But by the second decade, the high schools — notably New Trier, Lane Tech, Oak Park, Evanston Academy, and Crane Tech — emerged as the primary proving grounds for nascent champion swimmers. By the end of the 1920s the private athletic clubs were just about supplanted by the high schools as the producers of swim talents. In the early 1930s educators ruled that high school athletes could no longer compete for a club while attending school, which put an end to the great era of club swimming.
What explains the extraordinary innovation found in Chicago swimming? The city produced exceptional club coaches in Frank Sullivan and William Bachrach, and the great pioneering high school coach, Chauncy A. Hyatt of New Trier. Hyatt left in 1918, and the following year was succeeded by Edgar B. Jackson, one of the all-time legendary coaches of the sport. Jackson was joined in the 1920s by a great crop of high school coaches, notably E. C. Delaporte of Lane Tech, August H. Pritzlaff of Senn, Earl A. Rosinbum of Englewood, O. E. Hurz of Schurz. and Sam C. Marzulo of Maine. Chicago-area high school swimmers were the beneficiary of some of the most brilliant coaching to be found in the sport of swimming.
Early on Chicago produced wonderfully inventive swimmers — notably H. Jamison Handy, Harry Hebner, and Perry McGillivray — who pioneered the use of many strokes and techniques used to this day by competitive swimmers. Swimming was such a new sport it had tremendous room for dramatic changes in techniques and strokes, and the hot-house environment of growing competition in Chicago produced the desire of their participants to find that edge that could shave off a few seconds of time. And then there was the spirit of youth. Chicago worked with its high school swimmers to produce champions, and in the youth one can find the willingness to find some new way that may go against conventional wisdom. So both the swimmers and the coaches were innovating, experimenting, and exploring. In the big cities of America, and especially Chicago, swimming became a modern sport, the competitive sport we see today.
Footnotes available upon request. Published with permission. All rights are reserved by the author.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Illinois High School Association.