CHUCK HINES enjoyed a 40-year career with the YMCA, during which he was a strong advocate of the Olympic sport of water polo. He was a three-time All-America player, and he coached teams at three YMCAs that won national championships. His teams all started out at the beginning level, in small pools and with insufficient equipment, and fought their way to the top. This book is the story of those teams and their rags to riches achievements. The author has written two instructional texts on water polo and has served as chairman of national committees for the Amateur Athletic Union, American Swimming Coaches Association, and YMCA of the USA. He was an officer of the U.S. Olympic Water Polo Committee for the Games of 1972, which found the American men bringing home the bronze medal. His YMCA girls team won the gold medal at the Junior Olympics and competed at the World Women's Water Polo Club Championships in 1977. In recent years, he has been a historian for the sport, writing numerous articles for the YMCA's national magazine and the Water Polo Planet web-site. Now retired and a member of the Western North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Mr. Hines and his wife Lee and family members reside in Asheville, North Carolina.
Water Polo the Y's Way
By Chuck HinesAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Chuck Hines
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4389-2089-4Chapter One
YMCA Water Polo At Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota
We knew water polo was a rough and rugged sport. Not for sissies. Nonetheless we'd set up "goals" on opposite sides of the Midway YMCA pool in St. Paul, Minnesota. Then, dividing ourselves into two teams, we tried to shoot a water polo ball into the circular opening of the opposing "goal." Standing on the bottom was permitted. So were grabbing and ducking. It was a free-for-all. We called it Battle Ball and pretended it was water polo, even though we knew it wasn't the real thing. But it was a start.
I had come to work part-time at the Midway YMCA after completing a two-year tour of duty with the U.S. Army. This included a stint in Korea, where the War had just ended. I'd been stationed at K-55, a base about 60 miles south of Seoul. We were part of the occupation forces. If you've ever seen the TV show M*A*S*H, that was us. But we weren't a medical base. We were an engineering unit there to support a jet fighter squadron. I was the company clerk. Yeah, just like Radar from M*A*S*H.
One day a notice came through that the Pacific Area Armed Forces Swimming Championships were going to be conducted in Japan. Those of us in Korea could qualify in a meet to be held at Seoul. I had been a competitive swimmer since the age of 10 and eventually raced for my hometown high school in Rochester, Minnesota. As a senior, I participated in the YMCA's National Swimming Championships. Then I attended Gustavus-Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, on a swimming scholarship. One day while sitting in the cafeteria, I noticed a young lady waiting in line. It was love at first sight. Literally. I turned to my swimming teammates and said, "Do you see that girl? She's the one I'm going to marry." I didn't even know her name, but as I write this, Lee and I have been happily married for 55 years.
The Korean War was going on, and when I was 20, I received my draft notice. I was bused to Fort Riley in Kansas for 16 weeks of basic training, after which I was given permission to train for swimming in the small four-lane, 20-yard indoor pool at nearby Kansas State University. The Army sent me to the Midwest AAU Championships being conducted in a nice six-lane, 25-yard pool at Omaha, Nebraska, and I won the 100yard backstroke. My parents and Lee, to whom I'd become engaged, came from Minnesota to watch. Then the Army sent me off again, this time to Korea. We spent 11 days traveling on a troop ship. It was up and down. It was up and down. It was ... I was seasick the entire time. Imagine, the Midwest champ vomiting all over the place because he couldn't take the wavy water. How humiliating.
Compared to the ocean, the Seoul Olympic Pool was relatively smooth, and I qualified there for the Pacific Area Championships. Our Army team of six swimmers, including two who were black, a rarity in those days, flew to Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan and its beautiful eight-lane, 50-meter outdoor pool, joining about 150 other Army, Air Force, and Navy swimmers from Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Okinawa, Korea, and Japan. We were given time to do some enjoyable sight-seeing in the nearby city before competing at night, under the lights. I placed third in the 100-meter backstroke and joined with breaststroker Frank Wright from West Chester State College and freestyler Frank Dooley from Ohio State University to win the 300-meter medley relay race for the Army troops in Korea. We each received a beautiful silver cup, which I've retained to this day.
After a year in Korea, our entire company of about 200 men was shipped back home, and we were stationed at Camp Wolters, Texas. One day the base commander called me into his office, and as I stood at attention, he asked, "You're the swimmer?"
"Yes sir."
"Well, you've done your duty overseas, and now I want you to represent our base and the Army in swimming competition."
How lucky can one guy get?
My Army swimming teammate was Ollie Davis from Honolulu, and together we went to meets in Amarillo, El Paso, Wichita, and then to New Orleans, where I copped the Southern AAU championship in the 100-meter butterfly.
Author's Note: The butterfly stroke, with dolphin kick, had just been legalized, and I picked it up quickly and became proficient in it.
At the end of the summer, we flew in a military airplane to Sampson Air Force Base in upstate New York for the World Armed Forces Swimming Championships. We'd been practicing in a 50-meter outdoor pool at Camp Wolters and competing in various long-course meets. The World competition was contested in a 25-yard short-course indoor pool. I hadn't practiced turns for quite awhile, and after botching a couple of them, I took a slow third in the 200-yard backstroke. I did better in the 100-yard butterfly, losing by a matter of inches to an Air Force swimmer named Jack Nelson, who the next year would represent the U.S. at the 1956 Olympic Games.
While Jack Nelson went on to Olympic fame, I returned to civilian life in Minnesota. Lee and I were married. She had attended Gustavus-Adolphus College on a nursing scholarship and had completed her nursing degree at Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul while I was serving in the Army. So when I returned, she went to work as a Registered Nurse, and I went to college at the University of Minnesota on the GI Bill. Once I got my feet on the ground, I started working part-time at the Midway YMCA.
Which brings us to our Battle Ball games. I was now 24 and coaching many of the boys from the local high schools who practiced their swimming in the Midway YMCA pool during the winter months. Minneapolis and St. Paul were at the bottom of the state's interscholastic swimming scene. None of the schools had pools. All the practicing was done, usually several teams at a time, in YMCA pools. It was crowded and often disorganized. So I can say with a certain amount of certainty that when the boys I was coaching from St. Paul's Murray High School won the medley relay race at the state championships, it was quite a surprise, quite an accomplishment, and it probably helped convince me to pursue a career in YMCA aquatics. The victorious quartet was comprised of Dick Swanson, backstroke; Doug Malmstrom, breaststroke; George Ubel, butterfly; and Duane Malmstrom, freestyle. I still remember their names.
However, churning up and down the pool was easy compared to our Battle Ball games. It was a rare day that someone didn't end up with a bloody nose and the rest of us with bumps and bruises. But we enjoyed it.
I also was hired as the part-time swimming coach at the Minneapolis YWCA. We had a team of about 30 girls. This was l-o-n-g before the advent of Title IX – more on that later – and the high schools had no athletic teams for girls. None. Hard to believe nowadays, but true. It was the AAU – the Amateur Athletic Union – and the YWCA that provided girls with opportunities to compete in swimming and other sports. Our YW team started out slowly but ended up, a couple of years later, upsetting the state champs from Minneapolis' Ascension Club. I discovered in the process that I thoroughly enjoyed working with the ladies.
Author's Note: For those who may not know, Minneapolis and St. Paul, nicknamed "the Twin Cities," are adjoining communities separated only by the Mississippi River. Minneapolis is young and brash and Protestant. St. Paul is older and staid and Catholic. But they work well together. The University of Minnesota has campuses in both...
