Word: counsilman
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...Rest. Daily Breen drove himself through a strenuous routine of bodybuilding exercises and some three miles of practice in the pool. The stroke Counsilman taught him was a choppy, continuous flailing, with no graceful, resting glides between pulls, not even after turns...
Since watching the Japanese use it with remarkable success in the 1932 Olympics, most coaches have taught the glide stroke. "The logic of it sounds terrific," Coach Counsilman concedes. "Each arm gets a chance to rest up front until the other arm swings forward." But for all its attraction, the glide stroke seemed to Counsilman as time-wasting as stop-and-go driving. He preferred the continuous pace of his own windmill style, went so far as to work its advantages into a Ph.D. thesis. Counsilman found that Subject Breen's kick was relatively weak, but instead of beefing...
...schools as small as State University Teachers College at Cortland, N.Y. (enrollment 1,800), coaches of any sport are happy to settle for so-so teams. They may dream of training champions, but they make do with what they have. Cortland's Swimming Coach Dr. James E. Counsilman was even willing to work with a sandy-haired freshman named George E. Breen, whose best effort for the 440-yd. freestyle was a dismally slow 7:30. "He looked as though he might drown," says Counsilman, remembering that sad performance in the fall of 1952. Breen thought the coach...
Breen was a physical education student, but he had already decided that he had "very little athletic ability." ("I'm not well coordinated," he explains.) So he was doubly surprised to find that Counsilman, who was a national breaststroke champion in 1948 when he was a student at Ohio State, meant what he said. The coach had seen something "intangible" in Breen's awkward splashing, and the boy seemed just the one to help Counsilman test some of his unorthodox theories about swimming styles...
...Limit. By the end of Breen's first year of competitive swimming Counsilman's counsel was paying off. Breen could churn the 440 in 4:56. Last year he was fast enough to win the Eastern Intercollegiate and A.A.U. 1,500-meter championship. In June Coach Counsilman took off on a leave from Cortland to be physical fitness director of Philadelphia's Broadwood Health Institute, but he kept control of Breen's training by telephone and letter, nursed and egged him on to this year's Eastern Intercollegiate 1,500-meter title. Then he went...