dykstraNet

One of my best friends in the world is currently experiencing the culmination of 9 years of work. Dave Kelsheimer left the mainland in 1995 to build a swimming program in the Cayman Islands. On Friday, I saw him marching in the opening ceremonies of the 2004 games in Athens, Greece. With only one 25 meter pool, in a country of only 43,000 people, Dave produced 3 Olympic athletes. To put it in Dave’s always-witty terms, “When I showed up, swimming was a survival skill, not a sport.” Dave had to start from scratch with a learn-to-swim program that he slowly and methodically tranformed into an Olympic training program.

I saw first hand Dave’s devotion, and the special program he was building when I helped him with his summer swim camp for two weeks back in 2000. I saw how hard his kids worked, and how much fun they had with the sport. I remember thinking, “How does Dave get these kids to do so much work? Don’t they get burned out?” Dave’s response was one I remember to this day, “The definition of burnout is extremely hard work with no success. If you can see your success, there is no burnout. It’s impossible.” Dave made it a point to measure his swimmers regularly, and to take them to as many competitions as possible… and they were all in the pool twice a day, day in and day out. Looks like it has all payed off.

Well done my friend!

Troy native coaches Caymans to Athens

Roffey Qualifies for Athens
Andrew MacKay Breaks Record in Athens
Salute to Shaune Fraser

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2004 at 12:46 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.