I can't keep up with the guy, this coach, instructor and swimming pioneer. Sweat pours off my brow, blurring my vision as I scramble after him, toting my camera, trying to keep the mic somewhere near his mouth.
"Don't do that!" his voice booms at seventy-five budding swimmers. "Do it like this! Stretch your arms straight! Streamline, streamline, streamline!"
I should be tired from jet-lag, maybe even bored to tell yet another swimming story. I'm not. I'm inspired. And I realize:
The media of the last couple weeks, the black mark so many journalists and bloggers have been quick to try and stamp on my beloved sport...I'm not thinking about it.
The expose on ABC's 20/20 was felt physically, like a punch below the belt. I knew the issue was very real, and ugly, but also societal, that it touched every slice of life; churches, families, schools. Now we were being singled-out. It hurt... Everything positive in my life has come from our sport's community of volunteers, parents and coaches... For 17 days I had just been sad and depressed.
I think, in dark moments like these, the simple basics of why we love something shines the brightest. For me, presently, the light shimmered in the form of a small man, no taller than 5'8, with more passion and energy than I've been able to muster in years.
His name is Arthur Lopez, and his message is crystalline.
"My mission is to get kids in the sport," he said out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes fixed on the pool." If they swim, if they participate, they'll have every opportunity in the world. I know. I know because they'll have the discipline to make their own opportunities. That, my friend, is the message of this sport. And that is why we called the team Nadar Por Vida." Coach Lopez finally looks at me, delivering the translation, "Swimming For Life."
Arthur Lopez embodies our country's most recent chapter of the American Dream; Mexican-American, the first from his family to go to college, ultimately getting his Doctor of Jurisprudence. Arthur currently serves as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Director in the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. His responsibility, in a nutshell: to ensure that the policies of the Executive Branch, the White House, are consistent with the law.
Attorney Lopez is a watchdog, in effect, the "people's" watchdog. That's his day job. In the evenings, he's Coach Lopez, founder and president of Nadar Por Vida, a nonprofit in Falls Church, Virginia, committed to providing at-risk, minority and low-income children an introduction to the world of competitive swimming.
"Swimming's a gift, the best gift you can give a kid," Coach Lopez continues, striding up and down the pool. "You know minorities, especially Latinos, are three-times as likely to drown as Caucasians? You know that, right?"
My feet slip on the wet deck, my legs going rubbery for a split-second before I right myself awkwardly. Coach Lopez doesn't notice. He's in the grip of outrage.
"It's terrible! And Latino parents, they're living on the financial margins, barely making it. You wouldn't believe it. I've had to employ some kids who have gone through the program as lifeguards. I had to. As lifeguards they were the breadwinners in the family."
Coach Lopez goes on and on. He's a swimming purist, like many in the sport's community of nearly 600,000 active parents, coaches, athletes and volunteers. He cites all the reasons, the fundamentals: competitive swimmers are less likely to develop diseases, such as diabetes, for their entire lives; in school a competitive swimmer's marks are, on average, a letter-grade higher; their chances of going to college increases exponentially...
Coach Lopez is preaching to the choir. I know the data, but hearing it from his lips hits home. It sounds less like organizational "talking points" and more like the nitro needed to fuel a new swimming movement.
"We run the program on a shoestring," he says in a heavy exhale. "We accept any family and child with low-income challenges, but our community is predominately Latino."
Coach Lopez has built Nadar Por Vida from the ground up, from painstaking personal experience, maximizing efficiency through trial and error.
"I demand that the parents participate. I want them in the stands, to be present. I've learned that these kids behave differently when mom and dad are watching. They're more respectful and focused. They also try harder. They want their parents to be proud."
Unlike most learn to swim programs, Coach Lopez's "Swim for Life" curriculum also closes the gap between rudimentary life-saving skills and real racing potential. His kids learn every aspect of forward motion, in the water, to be competitive from the start. While that sounds audacious, the proof is all flesh and furious flipper-kick before me, in the pool.
Lanes one and two are all thrashers, small children taking their first strokes, but the instructors are right there with them, forcing their bodies into the proper position. They move them up and down the shallow end, and on day one, lesson one, "streamline" is taught.
I wasn't taught streamline for years, I thought. I just swam and swam and swam. This guy (Lopez) is teaching them the skills to be Michael Phelps from the beginning!
Lanes three through eight, swimmers work on starts, turns and drills. They're doing what world-class swimmers do, refining their technique to perfection. The energy of the place is high, very intense. The pool rocks with passion.
"My instructors aren't instructors," he says abruptly, as if correcting me, though I haven't made that distinction. "They're coaches. I am a coach. We are creating competitors here. We're giving these kids the means to go to any swim team and make it. More than make it. They'll be respected. And...this is most important...they'll have respect for themselves."
Coach Lopez is distracted for a moment by a young woman, a cop who volunteers her time for the program. She points to a family. They're Latino. They don't speak English. All I hear are sing-songy foreign words, familiar sounds to all Americans in this day and age.
The mother hugs Coach Lopez, her eyes tearing up as she turns away. Later I learn that the family was a walk-in. They had heard about Nadar Por Vida, and desperately hoped their young son could participate.
Coach Lopez doesn't say no. It's not a part of his being. The door to his pool is always open, and you don't even have to have a suit. He provides them.
"Suits...oh my," he rolls his eyes. "They are so expensive these days, but I have to have them. It's essential. I know if the kid gets a real racing suit, and looks like everyone else, he or she will stick with the program. It makes them feel like they are immediately a part of the team."
Women's suits are high, but even boys' jammers can run sixty to seventy dollars. Coach Lopez has gotten by so far on discounted or donated apparel, but he's had to beg to get it, or dip into his own pocket.
"Swimming is predominately white. It has been for generations. For the sport to grow in the future, it's going to have to have color. It's going to have to look more like a rainbow. We, Nadar Por Vida, are a big part of that equation."
My time with Coach Lopez ends with his swimmers crowded into one corner of the pool. He introduces me as an Olympian, as an ambassador of the USA Swimming Foundation (of which they are a local partner). I've done this thousands of times, talked to young kids. These kids are different. They hang on my every word. They're hungry for every bit of swimming info or experience I can share. There's something vaguely familiar about the moment. I feel like I know these kids, know their excitement... Only later does it occur to me that their passion comes from "pure need". Swimming's number one to them in a way that is very, very unique.
When I was a kid, swimming was my only way up and out. Coming from a lower middle-class family, it was my one ticket to a good education, and hopefully, to being the first Stewart to go to college. That was the familiar feeling I detected hanging in the air.
I'm fan of Arthur Lopez. He's a hero to me. He reminds me of my earliest coaches, the ones you remember and love because they introduced you to purpose and desire, a life with clear meaning. I think, in these times, when swimming has taken some negative hits, coaches like Arthur shine as strong leaders, living examples of why we remain a great community.
To support Nadar Por Vida, go here. (Remember, he always needs swimsuits for his kids.)
To support the USA Swimming Foundation, go here.
To become a Make a Splash local partner, go here.
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