Coaching with a Passion

Over the past year I have had the honor of interviewing dozens of coaches throughout Anne Arundel County.  Without exception, the most successful coaches I have met have one thing in common. 

They are passionate about their sport.  These coaches don’t just like their sport.  They are not just competent and knowledgeable.  These coaches love their sport.  More often than not they have grown up playing the sport and have never lost the desire to be in the middle of the game.

Coach Nancy Brown fits this bill perfectly.  Coach Brown has been a swimmer for as long as she can remember.  As a child she spent summers at her Grandmother’s house swimming in the river.

“I was like a river rat,” Brown told me, “I would get in that water and never want to come out.”

But it wasn’t until she entered middle school at Friends School that she swam for competition.  At the urging of her math teacher, Larry Peacock, she joined the swim team at Friends.  Though the team only practiced once a week and only competed in meets about four times a year, Brown would head to the pool to practice on her own. 

Coaching was a natural progression of Coach Brown’s passion for the sport.  At sixteen, again at the urging of Peacock, Brown began teaching swimming at the Suburban Club in Pikesville, MD. 

“I realized along the way that I have been given a talent and I want to share it,” Coach Brown said, “I think I got my athleticism from my Dad.  He went to the Olympics in 1928 for lacrosse. It was an exhibition at the time but he was a great athlete and he loved lacrosse.”

Coach Brown married young and continued to coach swimming while raising her four children.  In 1972, she made a trip to visit her parents in Florida and came across a flier that would shape much of her adult life.  The flier was for a Masters Swimming Program in that gave adults the opportunity to not only improve their swimming form but also to continue to or begin to compete.

Coach Brown was sold.  She came home and immediately began looking into starting a Masters Swimming Program in Maryland.  The Maryland Masters Program was developed because of her efforts in 1973. 

In 1984, Coach Brown moved to Pasadena and became the SPY Masters Swimming Coach and has not missed a beat since.

Susan Levickas, a former student who has known Coach Brown for 35 years says, “Nancy has inspired and nurtured more swimmers both young and old over her lifetime than can be counted. Nancy has a total dedication to the world of swimming and her humility has stood in the way of her receiving the recognition she so justly deserves. For Nancy swimming is her life and she has devoted her life to swimming.”

Humility is a word that I found associated with Coach Brown every where I turned. 

Julie Dukes a student in her Master’s Swimming Program said, “Nancy is amazing.  Even at 75, she is still setting records, but she will never talk about herself.”

At the YMCA National Swim Meet in April Coach Brown set four records.  She set a YMCA record in the 400 IM for the 75-79 age group in 7:20:82, a YMCA record and National record in the 100 backstroke in 1:27:70, a YMCA and National record in the 200 backstroke in 3:15:04 and a YMCA record in the 50 backstroke in the 41:78.

“This year is a big year,” Coach Brown said, “I turned 75 and aged up a group so I have been really focusing on my own swimming.”

When asked what her swimming plans are for the future Coach Brown said she is hoping to do the 4.4 mile Chesapeake Bay Swim next year.  If she does, she will be the oldest woman to have crossed the Bay.

But as I had been warned she would, Coach Brown quickly changed the subject when we started talking about her achievements.

"What I am really excited about is building the Masters Program.  At SPY and throughout the Maryland Masters."

Nancy Brown was given a gift as a swimmer and luckily, for her students, she believes it is her duty to share that gift, that love of swimming with anybody who wants to learn.