2024 SaddleBrooke Swim Club Heritage Hall recipient Larry John with Swim Club President Mark Randall
Noelle Minck
Heritage Hall is SaddleBrooke Swim Club’s (SBSC) way of showing gratitude and honoring members for their accomplishments, support, and service to the SaddleBrooke swimming community.
Doug Springer’s YMCA back in Maine used a Heritage Hall in the same way. He brought the idea up to the SBSC Board, and they began acknowledging members in 2010. It has become a yearly tradition for past Heritage Hall members to meet in January to vote for one to three teammates who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to the sport of swimming in the previous years. Not all of SBSC’s members compete, so it has become important to be able to recognize hard work outside of the pool also.
The variety of the actions, abilities, and benefits of past Heritage Hall members illustrates the wide-ranging undertakings of SBSC members. Fred Klein, Doug Springer, and Glenn Tewksbury achieved individual All-American status in their respective age groups for Masters Swimming. Jill Fritz put her knitting skills to work by knitting winter caps for all competitive and fitness swimmers to keep their heads warm over the years as they exited the pool. Lyn Moreno created and still hosts the Let’s Swim curriculum to teach basic swimmers more advanced stroke techniques in order to take their fitness swimming to the next level. Terese Butler established the Adult Learn-to-Swim lessons to provide compassionate swimming instruction to SaddleBrooke residents who never learned to swim but now want to explore new ways to get physically fit and conquer their fears. Past presidents Glenn Peterson, Jeff Eighmy, and Jack Allison provided leadership skills and guidance to establish the club and promote its well-being and worth to the community.
This year’s recipients, Claire Guidas and Larry John, establish the belief that organization is everything. Claire was chosen for her work as the “ultimate organizer” of all things SBSC. In her position as club board vice president, Claire has spearheaded new team suits, as well as all “merch” sold, and headed the Publicity Committee in an ever-challenging quest to promote all the wonderful activities and people associated with SBSC. Larry has taken on the mantle of meet director for the two major swim meets SBSC hosts. He is in charge of posting the meet announcements on the Masters Swimming site, collecting meet entries from all over the nation, coordinating with Oro Valley Aquatic Club for those meets, working to get hotel deals for out-of-town competitors, finding vendors to provide food on deck at meets, and the list goes on.
Heritage Hall, although brought to SaddleBrooke from elsewhere, reminds us all that our past is connected to our present, and our present powers our future by providing amazing examples of talent, triumphs, skills, and successes that will always need to be recognized, celebrated, and remembered.