Silencing of a Swimmer (eBook)

Chapter 2:
Coach Wade

At MSA, Marina’s coach was Coach Sam, a former college swimmer. All seemed to go well, and Marina began to improve.

I almost never went to her practices at first. If I did, I almost always dozed off. For the few minutes I was awake, it was more than obvious that this swim club was as cliquish as the pageant had been years ago; but in swim, there is a clock, not a judge. It was clear to me that the small size of the team and its lack of success was clique-related. Cliques are notorious for being unfair to their lessor members and pushing outsiders to keep them away.

The problems began when Marina started becoming a threat to the star swimmer at MSA, Megan Heggie—Coach Wade Heggie’s daughter. Two years younger than Marina, Megan was in a different age-group swim. (Swim is broken up into age groups: 10 years old and under, 11-12 years, 13-14, 15-16, 17-18, and seniors.) The problem was that Marina was improving much faster than Megan. Marina’s improvement was being noticed.

Unfortunately, Coach Sam moved away from the Meridian area, and in August 2013, Coach Wade began coaching Marina.

Soon after Coach Wade began coaching her, Marina’s demeanor changed. She wanted to skip swim practices, and the love she was building for swim came to a stop.

So, I started attending her practices and stayed awake. To me it seemed like Coach Wade was showing patterns of being unfair to Marina, and I wasn’t sure if Marina was the only target. He would put her in lanes with much slower swimmers, which made her practices useless. Maybe he was just unaware of how much she had improved.

I talked with Wade several times and tried to do the buddy thing. He told me stories of the state championships he won in the breaststroke and about his college swimming. (At that time, I had no idea he was lying about all of this. He never won a state championship, as the Meridian Swim Association website says. The college he went to shut down their swim program years before Heggie got there.)

I asked him all kinds of stuff like, “What does Marina need to work on? Have you noticed any improvement?” I told him we had a pool at home and asked if she could work on swim at home.

He said, “No.” Our conversation went on for another 20 minutes, mostly focused on what a good coach Wade thought he was.

Below is a scan from MSA’s website, retrieved 01/28/2019, which publishes his claim of multiple state championships.

During Wade’s swim years, the breaststroke champions were swimmers like Brian Ware, who was a bit older; Michael Russ, who was the same age group as Wade; and Davis Paden. These swimmers set the state records and won all the gold medals in breaststroke. I have spoken to numerous swimmers from Wade’s days of swim. Only a few remember him, and those who do say he was not fast at all. I spoke to one woman whose daughter swam with Wade back then. When I asked her about Wade’s championships in breaststroke, she replied, “Breaststroke?” She laughed and continued, “Wade’s sister was faster than Wade in the breaststroke.”

At one swim meet, someone mentioned how poorly Mississippi swimmers performed their underwater swimming. “Underwater” is when a swimmer pushes or springs from the wall until the swimmer breaks the surface of the water and starts their swim stroke. Marina was no exception. I thought, this was one thing we could work on at home in our own pool. In October of 2013, we practiced the underwater dolphin kick over and over again. Marina took to it quickly, and in no time became one of the best underwater swimmers in the state.

Coach Wade asked Marina what she was doing and why she was working on her streamline (the underwater technique), as if she was doing something wrong. It was a strange thing to ask since underwater swimming is such an important technique. Plus, she was now making qualifying times for Mississippi Swimming State championship meets. She almost reached an “A” time at a meet in Birmingham, Alabama. (Every few years, USA Swimming publishes a chart of motivational times, or “cuts.” Every age group gets a set of time standards to meet, ranging from “B,” the slowest times, to AAAA.) Time cuts are the most important thing to a young swimmer, and Marina began cutting time like crazy.

In early 2014, the kids were getting ready for a meet in Tupelo, and Coach Wade Heggie told me to make sure Marina shaved her legs before the meet. This was a standard for swim, and I told him she would. Then he asked me how high Marina shaved her legs. This question is inappropriate because the competition suits used at these meets at the time came down to the knee. How high swimmers shave their legs is not useful information. All the coaches I had spoken to, including representatives at USA Swimming, agreed the question was inappropriate.

Now, I have done some coaching, and I know sometimes one might ask a question without thinking about how it might sound. I figured that was the case for this question. I did not respond, thinking he would realize the question was inappropriate. He then repeated the question. “How high does Marina shave her legs?”

I replied, “I don’t think that question is appropriate.”

I thought he would say, “Oh, I didn’t think how that sounded. Sorry.” That was not his reaction. He was angered. From my experience as a coach, his reaction was unsettling. I got the feeling this wasn’t the first time he had asked this question about a swimmer.

I spoke with my wife about that incident. There had been a local softball coach that had recently been arrested for sexual misconduct with numerous minors over decades. We were naturally cautious, and we decided Marina should not be alone with Coach Wade in the future, just to be safe. Coach Wade never asked any more inappropriate questions.

At the meet, Marina won her first race ever, in the Girls 11-12 100-yard Backstroke. One would think that this would be a celebrated event. Nope. Coach Wade pulled Marina aside. I tried to get closer to hear what he said, but was unsuccessful. Marina later told me he said she should have saved her energy for the 50-yard Freestyle so she could get her “A” time.

Just for the record, no good coach would ever say something that stupid!

At every meet at this age, you want the child to make best times in all races. Saying that a child should not win their first race ever so she can make an “A” time in the 50-yard Freestyle is simply stupid. When a child wins a race, they get all pumped up, which helps in the next race. Every coach knows that.

She then swam the 50-yard Freestyle and made her “A” time. Not only was Coach Wade wrong in theory, he was wrong in reality.

Coach Wade then blasted me for being “on deck.” The pool deck at Tupelo is roped off. I was behind the rope, but he claimed that even both sides of the rope were considered to be on deck.

I told him that if the deck is not marked by the ropes, then it is his responsibility to tell us where the boundaries are and not blame the parents. Mind you, there were at least five other parents standing with me, who remained there after I left. Wade had no problem with them being there.

Coach Wade’s behavior toward Marina and me became even stranger. He was not happy about Marina swimming faster than his daughter, and was very unhappy about Marina working on her underwater technique at home. He told me several times, “You know she has topped out. You shouldn’t expect her to improve anymore,” or “You know, your daughter will never get a college scholarship for swim.”

I told him, “I don’t care. That is not why Marina is swimming.”

Sometime later, he wanted to talk to me about her swimming at home. I told him, “I don’t understand. Your team now has a faster swimmer. What is the problem?” He said the work we were doing at our home pool was not helping.

I said, “Okay, let’s test that. Give me something else to work on, and if she doesn’t improve, then we will know for sure.”

He said, “Okay, work on her breaststroke.”

Now, he said this because Marina was terrible at the breaststroke, and he was certain of our failure. I accepted the challenge. At that point, I was still unaware that Wade did not want my daughter to get fast. I was thinking that if she got faster in the breaststroke, he’d realize that training at home helped, and he could use it as a tool.

At a Tupelo meet January 31st through February 2, 2014, Marina placed 2nd in the 50-yard Breaststroke, making an “A” time and cutting three seconds off her best time. Marina was so excited. Coach Wade didn’t appear excited for her at all. He said, “You won’t get cuts like that again,” almost as if what she had done was pure luck—which, by the way, was wrong. Marina later would make many more three-second cuts.

He also said that the swimmer from the Sunkist team, whom Marina just beat, “… must have slipped on the block, because that’s the only way you could have beaten her.”

A normal coach would have said, “Good job!” or “Way to go!”

Marina was the only swimmer on the team making huge time cuts. Her work at home didn’t seem to be hurting. In fact, she was thriving.

On Monday, February 3, 2014, Coach Wade imposed a “No Parents On Deck” policy to...