• USMS Pool All American Honors – 12 Individual, 12 Relay 

• USMS Long Distance All American Honors - 2 Individual

• USMS Top Ten Achievements – 195 Individual, 71 Relay

USMS Profile

My swimming began at an early age in South Africa. My mother taught young kids how to swim in our backyard, and by age 2, I was already diving for coins in the deep end. I started competitive swimming late (around 12) and my first formal coach, Brian Wood, was the high school swim coach and English teacher. In my sophomore year of HS, I represented my state and eventually captained the state team my senior year. I represented South Africa in an international meet in Taiwan in 1981 and then represented my country in international lifesaving competition in Greece, Austria, Germany and the United States in 1982 and 1983. 

In 1984, I crossed the Atlantic on a full swimming scholarship to Boston University and captained the team in 1986 – the first foreign-born student-athlete to serve in that capacity at BU. I graduated with a BSc. in Biology and then went onto to receive my M.Sc. and Ph.D. at the University of Rhode Island. It was during this time that I was introduced to Masters swimming by Frank McQuiggan and Peter Solomon, who was coaching the URI Masters and RAM Club team at the time. When Peter Solomon left to coach at Middlebury, I took over the Masters Swim Program (1989-95) and kept it going for 7 years! I also helped coach the URI Age Group Team (1992-95) with Bob and Barb Crowder, who at the time were NEM members. 

During my post-doctoral years, I continued swimming masters; I swam in Atlanta, Ga. with the Pace Academy Masters Team (1995-97) while I did research at Georgia State and the Cambridge Masters (1997-2000) when I was Harvard Medical School. In 2000, I started my faculty career at Assumption University where I currently reside as a Professor of Biological Sciences. This was during my most active Masters Swimming, and I was inducted into the Rhode Island Swimming Hall of Fame in 2005. Then in 2009 the University asked me to start a NCAA D2 swimming program and suddenly my competitive Masters Swimming was paused while I built a college program from scratch–I did however manage to continue open water swims during the summers.

Building a college program took a huge percentage of my time but was very rewarding. I was most proud of the fact that even in the first year I never had a losing record as a head coach at Assumption. With a career 80-24 record in dual meets–we boasted an impressive 32-3 record at home (we never lost a home meet from 2011 to 2019). The team progressed each season from seventh in his first season to capturing three consecutive Northeast-10 Conference Championships in 2013-14, 2014-15, and 2015-2016. The team was runner-up the next two seasons and then in my final year of coaching (2018-2019) we finished first in the conference. During this time, I recruited and coached 125 student athletes and for 24 semesters in a row, we received the CSCAA Scholar All-American Team Award. I have been honored to attend 25+ weddings of my former athletes and still counting.

I was excited to get back into Masters Swimming in 2020 after not competing in pool competitions for 12 years. I missed the racing but more importantly I missed the camaraderie. One thing about swimming is that the friends you make last a lifetime. You may not see them for 5 or even 10 years but one day when you see their name on the heat sheets at a masters meet; you track them down and it is as if time has stopped, and all the great memories come back. 

Along the way during my early Masters days, I met and swam with many wonderful people, most notably, Peter Solomon, Frank McQuiggan, Jenny Mooney, Jacki Hirsty, Matt Gilson, Jason Eaddy, Mike Powers, Tom Manfredi, Fred Bartlett, Homer Lane, Doug Sayles, Tracy Grilli, Liz Welch to name just a few. I currently swim with Sarah Sutton, Chuck Barnes and EJ Testa.