{"id":458202,"date":"2020-12-28T07:54:56","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T14:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=458202"},"modified":"2020-12-28T07:54:56","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T14:54:56","slug":"celebrating-what-would-have-been-doc-counsilmans-100th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/celebrating-what-would-have-been-doc-counsilmans-100th-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating What Would Have Been Doc Counsilman’s 100th Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legendary coach\u00a0James “<\/strong>Doc” Counsilman <\/strong>would have celebrated his 100th birthday today, December 28, 2020. The Hall of Fame coach, inducted in 1976, passed away in January 2004 from Parkinson’s Disease. Today, he is still regarded as one of the greatest swim coaches of all-time for his innovative techniques that are still in use today, and for his work in coaching perhaps the greatest training group of all-time at Indiana University<\/a> in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n

Doc Counsilman – 1976 ISHOF Honor Coach<\/h3>\n

James Counsilman was born December 28, 1920 in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up and learned to swim in St. Louis, Missouri. He always had an implacable curiosity, and was fascinated by all kinds of swimming motions in nature. As a boy, he loved to watch fish slip through water, and he caught snakes and put them in water to see them swim. The outcome of his interest in animals was that he became a coach\/scientist who uncovered many of the secrets of human swimming.<\/p>\n

In 1938, at Maplewood, Missouri, Counsilman won his first important swimming race, and caught the attention of Ernst Vornbrock<\/strong>, the coach at the St. Louis Downtown YMCA. Vornbrock came into Counsilman’s life at the right time. His parents had divorced when he was a young boy, and his mother had struggled to support her family alone. Counsilman and his brother Joe<\/strong> were well-behaved, but needed a strong male figure in their lives. Vornbrock saw this, and soon took a keen interest in the young man, in whom he discerned the character and talent that leads to success.<\/p>\n

Vornbrock became a big influence in Counsilman’s life; so much so that, 30 years later, Jim was to dedicate his epoch-making book, “The Science of Swimming<\/a>,” to “My coach, the late Ernst Vornbrock.” He helped Jim to improve his self-image, and discover the potential that lay within him.<\/p>\n

Counsilman graduated from high school in 1937 in the middle of the Great Depression and in 1941, he finished second in the 200 breaststroke at the United States national outdoor championships that were held in his hometown of St. Louis. It was at this meet that Counsilman was introduced to Ohio State head coach\u00a0Mike Peppe<\/strong>, who took an interest in him. Later that year, Counsilman enrolled at Ohio State and won the 220 breaststroke at the 1942 short course nationals in Columbus.<\/p>\n

A week before the 1943 Big Tens, Counsilman was called up for military service in the middle of World War II. There is not much written on his military service but it is on record that he served between January and May 1945, where he flew 32 missions as a B-24 bomber pilot and was awarded the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster. While bombing the railroad marshalling yards in Innsbruck, his plane’s landing gear was shot out, and he flew the plane over the Alps to crash land near Zagreb in Yugoslavia, saving the lives of his crew. For his courage Jim Counsilman was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.<\/p>\n

Discharged from the Army Air Corps in August 1945, Doc returned to his studies at Ohio State, and was appointed captain of the championship-winning swimming team in 1946 and 1947. In 1946, he won the Big Ten Conference 200 breaststroke title, and took second in the same event to Indiana’s Charles Keating<\/strong> at NCAAs.<\/p>\n

\"doc-counsilman-podium\"

Photo Courtesy: Minor Studio<\/p><\/div>\n

In those days swimmers were allowed to coach while still competing, and Peppe, impressed by Counsilman’s personality and knowledge, asked him to be his assistant. The former bomber pilot made a strong, mature leader to whom the swimmers reacted with enthusiasm. And he kept a log of every workout, just as he had done in the Air Corps, something he continued throughout his entire coaching career.<\/p>\n

Years later, he was to say: “The most valuable research I ever did was contained in the daily training log of every workout I set in my career.”<\/p>\n

Counsilman graduated from Ohio State in 1947, then went to the University of Illinois to study for a Master’s degree under Professor Thomas Kirk Cureton<\/strong>, regarded as “the father of swimming research.” Cureton’s pioneering research made prolific contributions to understanding physical fitness and he was one of the first to undertake the physiological measuring of champion swimmers. Cureton was known for his ability to make students think; he challenged them, stimulated their curiosity, and their desire to investigate, saying:”If you end up upsetting tradition, why that’s fine.”<\/p>\n

Counsilman’s master’s thesis was on “A Cinematographic Analysis of the Butterfly-Breaststroke,” which included a comparison between the breaststroke whip and wedge kick actions. In this study, he pioneered the use of the motion camera as a scientific instrument for analyzing swimming techniques, and used this technique in the future to study some greats of the sport like Adolph Kiefer<\/strong> and Keith Carter<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

After receiving his Master’s from Illinois, he went to the University of Iowa, where he would prepare for his doctoral dissertation, and was an assistant coach for Dave Armbruster<\/strong> in the summer of 1948. It was that summer where Counsilman had a part in coaching\u00a0Walter Ris\u00a0<\/strong>to a gold medal in the 100 freestyle at the London Olympic Games.<\/p>\n

Ris’ Olympic victory gave Counsilman a great deal of confidence and he completed his doctorate in August, 1951. His dissertation discussed “The Application of Force in Two Types of Crawl Stroke”, and was a continuation of Louis Alley’s<\/strong> early work on the crawl-stroke. He stayed one academic year longer at Iowa, then accepted a post as assistant professor and head swimming coach at The State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland. It was at Cortland where James became “Doc” after his students informally referred to him as such after Cortland insisted all of its staff be addressed as “Doctor” if they met such requirements.<\/p>\n

While at Cortland, Doc spotted a freshman with obvious feel for the water. He had also seen him on the soccer field, and Doc knew that the young man had never swum competitively, but Counsilman told him that, with hard work, he could break world records.<\/p>\n

That man was\u00a0George Breen<\/strong>, who won a bronze medal three years later in the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956, and broke three world records in distance freestyle. Breen’s unorthodox two-beat crossover crawl kick was criticized by traditionalists who maintained that the ‘correct’ leg action in crawl swimming was the six-beat kick. In 1957, Doc was the first to describe and explain the two-beat crawl, and it became standard for most distance swimmers.<\/p>\n

Doc experimented with weight training in the 1950s. He held a landmark symposium of weight training experts at Cortland State in 1954 that helped to dispel the fallacy that weight training made swimmers ‘muscle-bound’. The Australians were making big strides with new training methods, and it was significant that George Breen, a weight-trained athlete, was one of the few non-Australians to challenge them.<\/p>\n

\"\"By the late 1950s, Doc Counsilman’s reputation as a coach and researcher was well established, and, when Indiana coach Robert Royer<\/strong> became ill and had to retire from his post, Frank McKinney<\/strong> urged the university to hire Doc. Doc thrived on being in the thick of competition, and it was natural that he jumped at the chance to enter the big leagues.<\/p>\n

Doc Counsilman came to Bloomington in 1957, and two outstanding swimmers, Frank McKinney<\/strong> and Frank Brunell<\/strong>, came to swim for Doc. Soon, others followed.<\/p>\n

Don Watson<\/strong>, coach of the outstanding Hinsdale High School, who had trained under Doc at Iowa, and was a close friend, encouraged swimmers such as John Kinsella<\/strong>, Scott Cordin<\/strong>, John Murphy<\/strong>, and many others, to go to Indiana.<\/p>\n

From Australia came Coach Don Talbot’s<\/strong><\/a> outstanding stars, Kevin Berry<\/strong> and Robert Windle<\/strong>, both of Olympic gold medal fame. The momentum was so great that, at the 1964 Olympic Trials, at Flushing Meadows, New York, seven of the eight finalists in the 200 meters breaststroke, led by the great Chet Jastremski<\/strong>, had been coached by Counsilman.<\/p>\n

Although barred from competing in the NCAA’s from 1961-1963 because of rule infractions by the university football program, Doc kept morale high and the team continued to compete at a high level in the Big Ten and AAU championships. Ted Stickles<\/strong> broke seven world records in the individual medley event during his career, and, in fact, during those years, it was calculated that Indiana teams could have defeated the rest of the world<\/a> in a head-to-head competition, as the Indiana men held nine of the 12 individual world records<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Doc Counsilman had an excellent training in the scientific method. His advice to students was: “Outline your topic clearly and discipline yourself to stay within the limits of your subject.” He realized it was important not to become a mere recorder of facts – one should try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.<\/p>\n

Doc once said that true understanding in any area of science is always preceded by a series of responses involving three stages:<\/p>\n