Going swimmingly

In her element: A lifelong competitive swimmer, Dale Tillman is beginning her third year as Notre Dame’s head swim coach. With Tillman coaches her own son, a junior at Notre Dame, and tries not to coach her daughter, a freshman swimmer for Girls Preparatory School—which competes against Notre Dame. “Sometimes,” she laughs, “I walk on eggshells around my own house.”

By Allison Gorman
Photo by Med Dement

Dale Tillman admits she “stumbled into” her position as head coach of the Notre Dame High School swim team. When the school found itself without a coach two years ago, Tillman, who had a freshman son on the team, offered to pitch in until a permanent replacement came on board. Not that the New Jersey native didn’t have the credentials: She swam competitively through college, kept swimming as a triathlete, and then kept a toe in the water by as a fill-in coach for the Scenic City Aquatic Club. Still, she said, “I’d assumed they had already selected somebody.”
What began as a casual offer turned into multi-year commitment. But Tillman wouldn’t have it any other way. Now entering her third season coaching Irish swimming, she says, “I didn’t anticipate being a high school coach; it wasn’t something I was looking to do. But it’s become a wonderful part of her life.”
Tillman took over a program that is competitive despite the considerable disadvantage of having nowhere to practice on campus. Regularly pitted against swimming powerhouses with pools, Notre Dame’s team must trek to the YMCA for after-school practice.
The kids meet the challenge with good humor. Last year’s team t-shirt read, “We’re pretty cool for a school with no pool”—a fact Tillman corroborates. Notre Dame’s swim program has generated considerable talent, with four graduates currently in college on swimming scholarships. “We manage to make it work, and the team be successful,” she says. “Because swimming isn’t managed by TSSAA, we have to swim against everybody. But if you were to break it down . . . we are consistently one of the better, if not the best, AA swim team in the state.”

Q. Is it possible for a kid to get into competitive swimming as a high school student if he’s never swum competitively before?

A. Swimming is a very difficult sport to pick up later in life. If a kid comes from just playing soccer, and they’re a really good all-around athlete and they’re dedicated and they’re willing to work hard, they can achieve a state-qualifying time—but it’ll be the hardest thing they’ve ever done. In Tennessee, in particular, high school swimming is extremely competitive.

Q. Why in Tennessee?

A. Tennessee has got some really good prep schools, and with prep schools come the pools, and with the pools come the swimmers. So it’s going to be hard for a kid to qualify to make the state meet if they don’t have some kind of competitive background.

Q. How can a kid get involved in competitive swimming prior to high school?

A. For a sixth- or seventh-grader who thinks they might want to swim in high school but hasn’t really been on a swim team before, the best thing they can do is to join one of the Chattanooga Area Swim League teams for the summer, and that will give them a good introduction into the sport, a base by which they can maybe get into high school swimming and not have it be the big, overwhelming mystery that it is. Typically it’s pretty low-cost, too.

Q. What sort of scholarship opportunities are there for swimmers?

A. You’re really competing against the best in the world to get into a Division I school on a swimming scholarship, but there are just as many good swim programs on the Division II level and the NAIA level, where they’ve got money to give and they’re looking for talent. I’ve encouraged my swimmers to keep an open mind when they’re looking at schools, because there are some real gems out there.

Q. How many kids come out for swimming, and how many can you keep?

A. We usually get 20 to 25 kids. We don’t really cut anybody. Mostly kids are going to drop out because they just can’t keep the pace; it kind of cuts itself. The swim team has done really well the last couple of seasons, and we’ve got more kids in the top 16 in state, so they know it’s all business. We’re there to have a good time, but we’re there to work.

Q. Kids have to meet a qualifying time to get to the state meet. Does every kid on your team qualify, or is it just some kids?

A. You can swim two individual events and two relays, or one individual event and three relays at the state meet, and my goal is for every kid to get as many qualifying times as they can. Two-thirds of them will qualify for state on an individual basis; some of them will be going as a member of a relay. Not everybody makes a qualifying time, but the ones that missed their times last year were very close. They were alternates for the relay.

Q. Does the sport attract more boys or girls?

A. Typically most swim teams have more girls than boys because boys are attracted more to basketball, football, the glamour sports, and swimming—it’s half in the fall, it’s mostly in the winter, it almost bleeds into spring. So if you’re swimming and you’re going to be serious about it, it’s hard to do other sports.

Q. Is there another sport that tends to be comparable to swimming, mentally or strategically?

A. Cross country runners tend to be good swimmers. If you’re going to run cross country and be good at it, you’re running in the heat, you’re running long times, your practices are long, it’s not a high glamour sport; you’ve got to be doing it because you love it. And it’s an individual thing—it’s done under the guise of a team, but really it’s you and the clock, which is similar to swimming.

Q. How important are strength and speed as opposed to technique?

A. You will only get so fast in swimming with poor technique. It’s all about efficiency. If you’ve got a sloppy stroke, all the speed work and all the strength and conditioning is only going to get you so far.

Q. How do you handle any nervousness before meets?

A. I’ll tell them, “Don’t get all wrapped up in what time you want to do.” For some of the people who swim the 500 freestyle, there’s 19 turns, and sometimes I’ll say, “We’re not going to worry about your time. You’re going to do 19 perfect turns, and that’s all I want you to think about.” Usually what happens is they do the time they want to do—because they made 19 perfect turns.

Q. You have a son who swims for Notre Dame and a daughter who swims for GPS.
How difficult is it to coach your own son, and how difficult is it to have a daughter for whom you’re not the coach?

My son and I have to work out a relationship where we know when it’s time for me to be coach, and then when we’re off the pool deck, I’m Mom, and I have to be a supportive parent and not coaching him constantly. He probably has been kicked out of practice more than anybody else on the team for sometimes crossing those lines. But it’s worked out amazingly well for both of us.
. . . When it comes to my daughter, I just give her some pointers when she asks for them on fine-tuning her stroke, fine-tuning the turns, all the little parts of it, as opposed to trying to coach the overall event.

Q. So how’s it going to work when your Notre Dame girls swim against GPS?

A. At a state meet, at prelims in the morning, it’s Baylor, it’s McCallie, it’s GPS, it’s Notre Dame. But at finals, it’s who’s from Chattanooga, and that’s who we all cheer for. I love seeing a kid who works hard, I love seeing them swim well. I don’t care where they go to school—a good swim is a good swim.
When my daughter gets up on those blocks, for sure, she’s going to be standing next to a Notre Dame swimmer, but she has a nickname that only people in the family call her, and when she hears that nickname, she’ll know it’s me. I can’t get overly carried away, because I need to be focused on my own swimmers. But you’d better believe I’ll be watching out of the corner of my eye.