Three swimmers find solace, success after coach's death

It was just one meet, but it meant Central Virginia Aquatics had arrived.
Mark Nicholson likely earned a college scholarship when the Western Albemarle senior and two CVA teammates went to Junior Nationals in Orlando, Fla. in March. He placed 12th in the 100-meter butterfly and 13th in the 200-meter butterfly, sparking a run of interest from top swimming programs.
“I was always kind of on the radar for colleges, but it was more me trying to find a college and contact their coach and say I’m interested in swimming, what can I do?’” Nicholson said. “Now it’s switched to colleges contacting me and asking for visits, so it’s pretty cool.”
Andrew Starr, already a touted college prospect as a junior, placed seventh overall in the 200-meter backstroke, which kept the recruiting packets flowing. It also put the Albemarle swimmer toe-to-toe with some of the nation’s best, including Georgetown Prep superstar Brady Fox and a number of other swimmers who are headed to the Olympic Trials.
“To be swimming right next to them is just like, wow,” Starr said. “And you’re in the finals heat with them so you don’t even really believe yourself.”
Daniel Foky, a junior at Charlottesville, shared his teammates’ sentiments. Foky placed in the top 60 in the 50-freestyle, one of the most competitive events in high school swimming.
“There were several people at that meet that you know they’re going to be in the Olympics some day and a lot of guys who were making Olympic Trial cuts,” Foky said. “It was pretty humbling to see so many fast swimmers in one spot and they were all 18 or under.”
After the tragedy that happened in December of 2007, it’s amazing that CVA’s coming out party even got off the ground.
Focused on excellence
Albemarle High coach Kyle Wilson wanted to start his own club swimming team early in 2007, and he knew exactly how he wanted it to run. He wanted there to be a point to every minute in the pool. He wanted his charges to strive for excellence — to never be satisfied with good.
“He was demanding, but he always showed the point,” Starr said. “If you did something right, there’d be positive incentives too.”
Wilson took a band of swimmers who’d struggled on other club teams like Starr, who bounced between several different programs, and put them under the Central Virginia Aquatics banner. The junior was a star-in-waiting who just hadn’t found a home.
He found it with Wilson. During the summer, Starr and Wilson spent three hours together in the morning and then they’d work together all day at the pool. After a three-hour break, Starr would return to practice with Wilson again in the afternoon. They became like family as Wilson even began attending Starr’s church.
And Starr got better in the pool partly because he worked at it and partly because Wilson demanded that he improve. Little escaped Wilson’s keen eye for detail.
“In my butterfly, he got angry because when I’d swing my arms over I’d keep hitting the surface of the water (with the back of his palms),” Starr said. “Sometimes it was like ‘All right dude, that’s a little bit of a small detail there to be worried about.’”
It wasn’t good enough for Wilson. The coach instructed Starr to strap paddles onto the back of his hands so that when they hit the water the
wrong way, they’d fly off. If the paddles came off because of improper technique, Starr would have to pull himself out of the pool and do pushups as a penalty.
But Wilson wasn’t all hard-driving drill sergeant; he knew how to have a little fun in the pool. Wilson’s sense of humor helped Foky, the Charlottesville junior, pass the time during drills.
“Swimming is a pretty boring sport in practice, it’s kind of monotonous sometimes,” Foky said, “But one time we were quoting Monty Python [movies] during practice in-between sets and that just kind of helped us keep on going.”
Wilson’s approach to the sport worked for Foky, who hadn’t found a club he wanted to swim for since moving to Central Virginia from Kentucky in middle school. He’d competed for the high school team, but hadn’t gotten serious about swimming until late in his career. That’s when, because of what he’d heard from other people, he joined with CVA and Wilson.
Nicholson, who laughs at the mere mention of Wilson’s name, found a mentor too, someone who could give him direction and purpose in swimming.
“He was really funny and a really close friend, but at the same time, he could turn right around and be an assertive coach,” Nicholson said. “I’ve never really met anybody like Kyle in life. He knew exactly what he was doing, what he was focused on and where he wanted to go.”
A death in the family
Wilson’s journey was cut short when he collapsed on the pool deck at a meet in Annapolis, Maryland on December 9, 2007, the victim of an acute aortic dissection. The 36-year-old coach had a congenital heart defect that he didn’t know about, a bicuspid aortic valve. And on that day his aorta ruptured.
Suddenly, all the guidance that the CVA swimmers found with Wilson was gone. And, as anyone would be in the situation, were hurt.
“Right after he died we didn’t know what was going to happen,” Foky said.
Just as quickly as everyone at CVA began to grieve, they began to search for a solution.
“At first it was really kind of devastating and frustrating and all that stuff at the same time,” Nicholson said. “From that, I kind of got in the mindset of trying to think if Kyle was still here, he would definitely not want me whining or stopping training. That’s the last thing he would want.”
To make that happen, CVA needed a coach. They found one in Mary Catherine Thomas, an age group coach at S.W.A.T swimming, a club team in Southwest Virginia. Thomas worked under SWAT head coach Scott Baldwin, one of Wilson’s closest friends in the swimming community, and was one of the first people to Wilson’s side when he collapsed at the Annapolis meet.
Shortly after Wilson’s death, Baldwin talked to Thomas and spelled things out for her — she needed to go to Charlottesville. The move made perfect sense to Thomas, who knew a great deal about Wilson’s program. She’d watched CVA develop from afar through Wilson and Baldwin’s frequent phone calls, as well as joint training trips and meets.
She also knew that she was needed, and nothing after she arrived changed that perception.
“I found a group of kids that were very hurt,” Thomas said. “They were broken physically and emotionally. Someone they looked to as a mentor and a hero almost just died. They were beaten into the ground.”
In addition to the stress of Wilson’s death, several of the swimmers had nagging injuries. They had to catch up on grades because Wilson’s funeral happened during exams. Starr even had a bout with mononucleosis.
Not that it was easy for Thomas either. The young coach was dealing with Wilson’s death on her own too. She’d also never mentored older swimmers extensively, working mostly with younger athletes that didn’t face the pressures that high school can bring.
A new path
So Thomas and the three swimmers started the healing process together. The new coach immediately cut their daily yardage in half, limiting their drill time so that they could catch up on class work and recover from the emotional roller coaster they’d been on.
Thomas also did her best to make swimming fun, but at first she met some resistance. To liven up a breath-holding exercise, she handed the boys a pool toy — a rubber torpedo — and instructed them to move it from one end of the pool to the other without coming up for air. Instead of jumping at the chance to mix it up in practice one of the swimmers said, “Why can’t we do 25s (meter swims) without a breath?”
“They thought if they had fun they weren’t doing something right,” Thomas said.
Slowly, the trio came around. There was a certain familiarity to Thomas’ style despite the differences between her and Wilson’s approach. Early on, Thomas came to practice and asked the swimmers to perform certain drill sequences that Wilson had championed.
“They were like, you know that?” Thomas said. “I was like, ‘Of course I do, because Kyle made me watch the video.”
In moments like that, CVA became a team again, never forgetting Wilson but ready to move forward. It became clear that Thomas was going to take over permanently as the head coach, and that gave Nicholson, Starr and Foky a sense of stability.
“She already knew the world about what we were doing and what Kyle was doing with us,” Nicholson said. “She’s well aware of what Kyle stood for and what he expected out of this team.”
So the short course season continued and Nicholson, Foky and Starr headed for Junior Nationals in Orlando. There, the three CVA swimmers managed to place fourth among teams from Virginia and 31st out of more than 200 teams from across the country. That’s without the chance to compete in a single relay event (you’d need four swimmers) where a lot of points can be scored.
“You take this set of circumstances, and no matter how you look at it, it’s not supposed to work,” Thomas said. “You would think that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing right now.”
And yet, all three are. Thomas has become the part head coach and part den mother of CVA swimming, a figure that the three swimmers can rely on as both a supportive leader and as someone who will remember to bring an extra swimsuit in case someone forgets. She’s not Wilson, and she doesn’t try to be him, either. Through that approach, she’s helped create an environment where success, clearly, can happen.
“These boys are smiling again and in the first month and a half I was here they weren’t doing that,” Thomas said. “Nobody was.”
All three have taken huge steps to secure futures as collegiate swimmers if they so choose with their performances at Junior Nationals. They’re focused now on taking the necessary steps to fulfill the expectations that Wilson instilled and the promise that he recognized in them. Time has allowed that healing process to take over.
“Swimming didn’t really lose its fun,” Foky said, “it was just hard for a few weeks. Eventually it became more and more normal.”
Normal is an interesting choice of words when you’re in the process of doing the extraordinary.