USA Swimming News

 

Native American Heritage Month: Four Corners Aquatic Team  (11/14/2007)  

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, celebrated in the month of November, USA Swimming will showcase a series of articles on prominent Native American swimmers, coaches and teams throughout the month. Our premier article features the Four Corners Aquatic Team.  

 

When swimmers on the Four Corners Aquatic Team dive into the pool for practice, the only color they see is the black line on the bottom. Although the team is nearly 25 percent Native American, swimmers are more concerned with the differences in their strokes than the differences in their skin.

 

“All the kids are the same in that they like to swim,” said Tex Doherty, the head coach of FCAT. “The fact that they like to be in the water makes them the same regardless of their race.”

 

But it hasn’t always been that way.

 

“We have burst the bubble on the school of thought that swimming is a white sport,” said assistant coach Dick Taylor, who recently spoke at USA Swimming’s Diversity Summit. “The public perception on reservations was, ‘We aren’t going to do well.’ Then they see the newspaper with a picture of a girl winning state championships. So, we eliminated that perception that Native Americans can’t swim.”

 

Not only have FCAT swimmers won state championships, they have also posted AAAA and AAA times despite the fact that the team has only been around for five years. Taylor and Doherty also expanded the team from Farmington into Towaoc and Ignacio reservations to encourage people to swim. It wasn’t necessarily about recruiting Native Americans to the sport; they just wanted to recruit anyone who loves the water as much as the rest of them.

 

“Historically, competitive swimming just hasn’t been offered to Natives from what I’ve seen,” Doherty said. “The ones who are offered a chance become very successful. They can do it just as well.”

 

With a high percentage of the team’s fastest swimmers being Native American, the FCAT coaches decided to host the first Native American Swimming Championships in 2007 in hopes of encouraging Native Americans to reach new heights in the pool.  

 

“I don’t know if there have been any Native Americans to compete at the National Championships,” Doherty said. “To my knowledge, there hasn’t been. We want to encourage swimmers to look ahead into leading Native Americans to new levels in the sport.” 

 

The coaches also encourage their swimmers to compete at the North American Indigenous Games, which is a biannual Olympiad of sports for those who can prove they are Native American.

 

“There are not a lot of necessarily positive, successful things in a lot of these kids’ lives,” Taylor said. “Swimming has taught them they can be successful and do something well when they might not have thought they could. If they are not doing well at school or socially, then they go to a swim meet and win medals consistently, they feel good about that. The buzz word is self esteem.”

 

The tribal councils agree.

 

“The tribal councils have been very supportive,” Taylor said. “They are very willing to invest money into anything positive.

 

“I think that swimming has really helped – especially with those were going through difficult family experiences. They could always go down to the pool. It’s like a refuge for them. They can go race, have fun and be a kid.”

 

After all, that’s what swimming is all about.