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Nickel City swimmers churn up the water in Alumni Arena
By DONNA BUDINEWSKI
Reporter Assistant Editor
As Maureen Jameson can attest, it's not difficult finding a parking spot at 5:30 a.m. near Alumni Arena on the North Campus.
Members of the Nickle City Splash
Masters Swim Team meet three times a week to practice in the Alumni
Arena pool. Members can compete, or just swim for fun and fitness.
PHOTO: NICKLE CITY SWIMMERS
Jameson, professor of French and interim chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, begins her day six days a week with a swim or practice as a member of the Nickel City Splash Masters Swim Team, which meets three times a week to practice for an hour and a half.
The team, whose 90 members range in age from 19 to 75, is made up of UB students, faculty, staff and alumni, as well as other adults from the community. The team is recognized by the United States Masters Swimming (USMS) and the USMS Niagara District, and is affiliated with the UB women's varsity swim team. Members compete in local, national and international swim meets; a large group competed at the Empire State Games last summer. Described by Jameson as a very social, tightly knit group, the team also hosts two meets a year, with most proceeds going to support UB's women's varsity athletes, and a portion going to support the pediatric dentistry clinic at Women's and Children's Hospital.
New members are always welcome and can swim with the team on a trial basis before making a commitment. The cost for membership is $200 annually or $75 per semester. In addition, swimmers are required to be members of the USMS organization, which also requires a fee. Former NCAA competitors coach the team.
Maintaining a consistent practice time isn't always a sure bet, says Jameson. The competing needs of the university's varsity swim teams sometimes mean crowded workouts. This fall, the decision to reserve parking lots near Alumni Arena for home football tailgate parties almost derailed weekend practices. Dogged persistence has enabled the team to maintain a regular schedule, but many swimmers feel that UB should make a greater commitment to adult health and fitness, Jameson asserts—starting with its own employees and students.
And, Jameson suggests, "It's fine to promote school spirit and promote the home team, but we can support other priorities as well. We shouldn't promote a culture of spectatorship—we should work instead towards a culture of participation."
According to Jameson, members of the swim team lead unusually adventurous lives and few are spectators content to sit on a hard bench while others are out on the field sweating and getting banged up for entertainment's sake. The human-interest stories she shares about team members sound like Discovery Channel or "Survivor" tales of people pushing themselves beyond natural limits because their lives or health were compromised by critical illness or injury, and they refused to succumb to a life of inactivity.
One team member Jameson speaks about is a 40-year-old woman who joined the team after a brush with death due to kidney failure. "She was very critically ill when she received a transplant. After a long rehabilitation, she made up her mind that she was going to be an athlete," Jameson says, noting that the woman went on to compete in the World Transplant Games.
Greg, another team member, is a competitive cyclist and triathlete. When his brother developed kidney failure, Greg underwent surgery, donating a healthy kidney to replace his brother's failing organ.
One of the more famous competitors among the Nickel City swimmers is Joanne Rappl York, a Buffalonian who qualified for the highly competitive 25th annual Iron Man Triathlon World Championship in Hawaii last October.
"The swimmers are gritty, determined people, and the coaches are tremendously supportive. There is a community there—people encourage each other—it's just tremendous," says Jameson, who has been with the team since it started six years ago.
"I came back to swimming for exercise, but now it's such a huge part of my life. The day isn't right if it doesn't start with swimming," says Jameson, who often can be spotted riding a bike to work in warmer weather.
And, she pointed out, this is not recreational swimming. "The mere fact that UB refers to everything that isn't varsity athletics as 'recreation' is a way of making fitness secondary," Jameson maintains.
Members of the team can compete in any of the sponsored game and meets, and many do, she explains. "It's up to the individual whether or not to compete. In masters competitions, prizes are awarded by age and gender group, so getting a blue ribbon isn't exactly rare. When you get up to the starting block, you do feed off the energy of your competitors, but the real contest is between you and your own set of limitations," says Jameson. "The best masters swimmers are competing against local and national records, and the fastest times per age group keep coming down."
Jameson commends the work of Recreation and Intramural Services in the Division of Athletics, but urged that the university endorse a broader, campus-wide fitness initiative.
"We need to dedicate our facilities to the needs of all athletes, whatever their age, and whether they're funded varsity competitors or not."
She suggests adding bike racks and designating bike and walking paths, and outfitting one or two rooms in every campus building with stationary bikes or treadmills.
"We spend as much as two or three hours a day in meetings, slumped in a seat looking at a plate of doughnuts on the table. Why not meet on our feet?" she asks.
The combination of superior medical education and research facilities, as well as athletic resources, makes UB an ideal place to launch a workplace fitness initiative, as many other universities have done, Jameson says. She cites a recent report on physical activity by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that urged adults to engage in at least "light activity."
"We had a lot of fun with that report," she says, noting that according to the report, photocopying was considered "light activity." "How about a triathlon involving photocopying, faxing and stapling?" she jokes.
UB has an opportunity to support the physical fitness of its students, faculty and staff and to "go beyond photocopying," she says. A recent survey established that students want a recreation facility separate from those used by varsity and club athletes, and are willing to pay for it.
"We've heard that President Simpson is an avid cyclist. Maybe we'll persuade him to join the swim team as well," she says.
For more information about the Nickel City swim team, visit its Web site at http://wings.buffalo.edu /org/nickelcity/.