Tuesday, January 12, 1999
Motherly love keeps team afloat
PROFILE: Women’s swimming coach Cyndi Gallagher finds time
to train UCLA swimmers
while raising a daughter
By Steve Kim
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The pool must have been her fountain of youth.
She jokes she’s never going to be older than her thirties,
although she hints if you were to ask in December, she could have
honestly said she’s not turning forty this year. Even today,
though, it’s hard to pick out the head coach when she’s surrounded
by a group of swimmers.
"It’s the biggest joke ever," Cyndi Gallagher said. "Whenever
we’re traveling, no one ever knows who the head coach is."
She even remembers a time when she took some recruits to dine at
a restaurant and the waitress handed the bill to one of the high
school swimmers.
So it comes as a bit of a surprise that she’s been at UCLA for
almost twenty years – two years as a Bruin swimmer, five as an
assistant coach and eleven as the head coach. She’s usually done
things a little earlier than others.
As a 14-year-old, Gallagher was a world-ranked long distance
swimmer and competed at the ’76 Olympic trials. She married during
her college senior year and coached as soon as she graduated until
she gave birth to her daughter, Tori.
At the time, the amount she was getting paid as an assistant
coach was lower than the cost of childcare. So she opted to take a
break from coaching and spend time with her newborn.
Then came an unexpected opportunity. The head coach at the time
got fired and Gallagher was asked to fill the empty spot, a huge
empty spot. Even with the demands she already had as mother, she
realized a job offer like that did not come every day.
"I was eating bon-bons and playing with my one-year-old," she
said. "But it was too good of an opportunity. Being an assistant
for only five years and never having coached outside of UCLA,
someone like me getting the job was unheard of.
"So I said, ‘Okay, lets try it for a year.’ Then I get a
promising freshman and stay four more years. And then the same
thing happens and I end up staying longer, and so on."
During her first year as head coach, Gallagher remembers the
lack of respect from other swimming coaches because she was so
young and the fact that she was a woman. She’s still one of only
half a dozen female head coaches in NCAA Division I swimming.
"People were just dripping on me for getting the job," she said.
"That fired my swimmers up because people weren’t giving us
respect. I told them, ‘Hey, you’ve got to earn respect. Let’s earn
it now.’ And we ended up sixth in the NCAA’s that year – that was a
highlight."
Her freshman year as a coach is long over now and she get more
respect than she used to get. But as a coach, she’s naturally
wanting her team to do better, especially since UCLA is such a
serious sports school.
"You’re sitting at the coaches meeting and you have Al Scates,
who has 17 national volleyball titles, next to you and Guy Baker
coming in with both men’s and women’s water polo titles," she said.
"UCLA is expected to win, and I put the pressure on myself to step
up."
Her days as a distance swimmer have rubbed some endurance off on
her coaching personality. She’s a self-described driven person who
expects herself – as well as her swimmers – to maintain a work
ethic that demands six hours of daily training.
As a mother, though, Gallagher’s work day does not stop after
her nine-to-five job ends. It actually goes before and beyond that
in coaching (like 6 a.m. workouts) and being her 12-year-old
daughter’s trusty driver to all her swimming, soccer, basketball
and flute lessons – all after her day as a coach is over. As a
single mother, she makes it her priority to give her daughter ample
parental attention.
"Family is number one – it’s the most important thing," she
said. "I’m going to watch my daughter grow up. We have four morning
workouts and I go to two of them while Brad Burnham, the assistant
coach, takes the other two because it’s really important to have
breakfast with my kid and take her to school. My swimmers are
really understanding about that and the fact my daughter’s around
the pool a lot."
Little Gallagher may not know she has it so good. Not every
12-year-old girl gets to go to the Rose Bowl and UCLA basketball
games or has a mom who has the power to tell forty grown women what
to do.
It’s all about trying to find a balance between coaching and
mothering, Gallagher says.
"You have to have a really good baby sitter or a really
supportive husband because it’s just a wild schedule," Gallagher
said, smiling ironically. "As a coach, you’re traveling and
recruiting all the time, and you work weekends. But I try to
encourage it if one of my swimmers want to be a coach."
As a transfer from University of Florida, student assistant
coach Susan Trainer has had her share of swimming under top
coaches. Under Gallagher, Trainer says she can really feel a
compassionate personality, something she says many coaches
lack.
"One of the differences is that Cyndi really cares about her
swimmers as people, not just athletes," Trainer says. "I had
coaches where in a year that you’re swimming fast, they can’t do
enough for you. And when you run into problems, you’re just pushed
aside.
"But Cyndi stands behind her swimmers," Trainer said. "She won’t
compromise the integrity of her team rather than to win at any
cost."
Recruiting is a big deal for all athletic programs. In between
coaching and mothering, Gallagher keeps herself busy trying to
convince high school swimmers to choose UCLA.
Without a men’s swimming program, Gallagher speaks of the
frustrations of those who doubt the validity of her women’s
program. Ever since UCLA dropped men’s swimming five years ago due
to gender equity issues, Gallagher has had to answer questions from
recruits and parents of why it was dropped and if it is ever going
to be restarted.
"When you talk to 17-year-old girls, they think there are no men
here," she says. "And they don’t think there’s support for the
swimming program, which is silly because we have so much support
for women’s athletics."
On the other hand, Gallagher admits UCLA is not a hard place to
sell, because of its academic and overall athletic reputation.
Although she has to search harder for those who show potential, she
likes the reasons why her recruits choose UCLA.
"The kids I do get are open minded and quality kids," she adds.
"They are swimming for a woman coach, which most aren’t used to,
and they’re not coming here because there’s a cute men’s team –
which would drive me crazy if they did."
Notice how she calls her swimmers her ‘kids.’ There’s that
maternal instinct coming through again. You can take the coach out
of a mother but you can’t take the mother out a coach.
Eleven years as head coach. Every year, her ‘kids’ provide her
with different and interesting reasons for her to look forward to
the next season.
Like the time her team placed respectably in the NCAA’s on her
first season as head coach. Like the time one of her swimmers,
Annette Salmeen, won a gold medal at the ’96 Olympics.
This season is full of freshmen. They naturally do silly
freshmen things that make her slap her forehead and let out a sigh
like Ricky Ricardo does when Lucy makes mischief.
Mostly, though, she’s impressed by her team’s work ethic. And
she hopes this young team can believe in itself, and whip up some
fabulous swims at the Pac-10’s and NCAA’s.
With that hope, Gallagher looks forward to the rest of the
season. And maybe in four years she’ll finally have a top five team
– without ever turning forty.GENEVIEVE LIANG/Daily Bruin Senior
Staff
Women’s swimming head coach Cyndi Gallagher juggles time between
her team and her child.
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