Defunct UM swim team dominated the Big Sky

Seven trophies sit in a single case, far from the six football cases that line the Hall of Champions in the Adams Center.

Written on the glass is every year from 1966 to 1974, signifying nine men’s conference swimming titles that are long forgotten, lost in the shadows of 10 consecutive Big Sky Championships garnered by Grizzly gridiron greats. Photos of swim teams from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s grace the maroon background. Headlines read “Bruins” rather than “Grizzlies” because that’s what the mascot for the swim team was back then. Articles are posted about a varsity sport that no longer exists at the University of Montana.

Harley Lewis is currently the director of development at the University of Arkansas and was the UM athletic director from the early-1970s through 1989. In 1966 he was a track and field coach at UM. Swimming, baseball, wrestling and gymnastics were all programs cut from UM athletics during Lewis’ tenure.

“At the time that the cuts took place we had all kinds of issues trying to balance men’s and women’s teams,” Lewis said.

The women’s swim team, which Lewis said was a skeleton program from the beginning, was eliminated shortly after he left.

“The issue with swimming was that there weren’t enough resources to fund men’s and women’s athletics,” Lewis said, “so we had to modify.”

This was during the early years of Title IX.

“We needed to pare back if we wanted to stay Division I and accommodate the law to give men and women equal opportunity,” Lewis said.

Swimming was the decided sport to cut for a number of reasons. For one, it wasn’t a strong high school sport in Montana, so there was a lack of student interest necessary to help the program stay afloat. Finances were also an issue.

“We tried to fund the people that generated the revenue, so obviously that was football and basketball players,” Lewis said.

Lewis recalled that men’s head coach Fred Stetson, who won Coach of the Year in 1976 after guiding the team to its ninth straight title, did a superb job.

“They pretty much dominated what was the Big Sky Conference back then,” Lewis said.

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The last three years of his high school career at Hellgate, Doug Ammons was swimming with the big boys. Although it is illegal today, it wasn’t uncommon in the 1960s and 1970s for prep athletes to compete on collegiate swim teams as early as age 15. So it was with Ammons, who competed for the now-defunct UM swim team from 1972 to 1978. Ammons, 51, said the program was a success in large part due to Stetson’s stellar recruiting.

“We had people from California, Oregon, Montana and all over the Pacific Northwest,” Ammons said. “Just a smattering of people who were really, really good.”

Not only did the team boast plenty of athletic talent, but the swimmers excelled in the classroom.

“That was one of the things that impressed me,” Ammons said. “Academically, the last three years our team averaged a 3.5 GPA or so. A lot of us were getting straight A’s in real tough subjects.”

Ammons recalled sitting in the back of the van traveling home from a swim meet with strep throat, a fever and a flashlight, trying to study for his physics final.

“That’s the thing with swimming,” he said, “you don’t just get jocks.”

Ammons’ teammate Dave Gerard was an All-American, and Ammons said most on the team were just a second or two shy of garnering those same honors. Ammons thinks that if the team had competed in Division II swimming instead of at the Division I level, Montana could have had as many as 10 All-Americans.

Ammons competed in the 200 individual medley in addition to freestyle. As a swimmer for Hellgate, he placed fifth in state in both events. Doug’s brothers Carl and Bruce also swam for Montana. Doug Ammons said the competition in swimming today is not as steep as it was in their day.

“Twenty-five years later we would still be getting in the top three,” Ammons said.

By the late 1960s, there were only two other swim teams left in the Big Sky due to Title IX.

Today, none of the nine Big Sky schools offer competitive swimming.

“We were super low-budget but very motivated,” Ammons said. “You have to be to swim up and down a pool when you have homework to do.”

While Stetson was a knowledgeable coach, Ammons said the esteemed coach had a unique motivational technique.

“He would insult rather than praise,” Ammons said. “The program would’ve been even more successful had the ambiance been more positive. But that just wasn’t Stetson’s style.”

Ammons recalls many things about his days on the UM swim team. He remembers traveling in a van as far as Portland and Northern Arizona, since the team could never afford to fly anywhere. He remembers a meet his freshman year at the University of Idaho, where the team won unexpectedly and broke several records.

“We all just swam like maniacs,” Ammons said. “I placed third or fourth in the 200 individual medley and Stetson, who almost never got excited about anything, was dancing around saying ‘Do you realize what you’ve done?!’ I always swam with a lot of force, but in this case it was like I wasn’t even touching the water.”

The Grizzly Pool students know today isn’t what it used to be. Ammons said it used to be loosely run with very little discipline.

“I remember it would be 20 or 25 below and we would open up the garage doors that were on both ends of the building,” he recalled. “We would have snowball and kickboard fights, and use the extinguishers as jet packs.”

Ammons said they would take the kayaks off the racks and launch them off the three-meter board. Ironically, Ammons has been a world-class expedition whitewater kayaker for the last 20 years. He has even done documentaries for National Geographic and ESPN, garnering an Emmy award.

“I love the water,” Ammons said. “I’m really comfortable and swimming was a huge part of that.”

Water led Ammons from one place to another. The transition from swimming to kayaking was easy, and Ammons was a quick learner. He can do an Eskimo roll in about five seconds, and thanks to swimming is capable of holding his breath for at least three minutes. He said the paddle is just an extension of his arms.

“Competitive swimming opened up a world to me, but I don’t really like competitive sports,” he said. “I swam several million laps in a pool but I would much rather be out in the mountains.”

Recently, Ammons took his 2-year-old grandson to the Grizzly Pool for a swim. He couldn’t help but notice how different it is now.

“I used to do back flips with twists off of 80-foot ridges,” he said. “The other day I do it and the lifeguard tells me not to, it’s against the rules. I just had to laugh.”

Ammons said there used to be incredible freedom, as Stetson was a very lackadaisical guy. While the swimmers had a blast, Ammons said it was probably one “massive liability suit waiting to happen.”

“It’s a wonder there weren’t multiple deaths or massive injuries,” he said.

Ammons said he thinks it is a shame that UM students today no longer have the opportunity to compete on a swim team, but he understands the reasons the sport had to be cut in the first place.

“You don’t get 20,000 people packed in the stands for a swim meet,” he said, alluding to the massive crowds crammed into Washington-Grizzly Stadium for a Montana football game.

Today, Ammons has a Ph.D. in psychology and edits two of the largest psychology journals in the world. He thinks sports are taken too seriously today, that athletes get “big man on campus” syndrome only to get out in the real world and realize they are nobody. That didn’t happen to the swimmers, he said.

“Swimming prepared you for that because you were never anything to begin with,” he said.

It goes to show the lack of support swimming had when it was a sport, and is proof of just how little it matters now. Nearly all evidence that it was ever a varsity program at UM is gone now. The records that once hung on the wall at the pool have been torn down.

“For a long time on the far wall there was a big mural of a Grizzly and it said ‘conference champions’,” Ammons said. “Now there is no record at the pool that we ever existed.”