The Old Swimming Pool
By Jim Joanos
The old pool is not needed anymore. The swimming pool in Montgomery Gymnasium has been closed. Soon they will be doing away with it.
The building now known as Montgomery Gymnasium was opened in the 1929-30 school year. The swimming pool wing was added five years later. Katherine Montgomery was FSCW's head of physical education when the building and pool were built. She took a great interest in the construction. Dr. Grace Fox tells a story about how Montgomery personally stopped construction on the pool at one point and made them start over because it had not been done correctly the first time. It is fitting that the building and the pool were later named for Montgomery. When finished, the 40 foot by 75 foot, tile-walled swimming pool was state of the art. Florida State was then named, "Florida State College for Women", and had an all female student body. The pool played a major role at FSCW.
The Latin motto used by FSCW was "Femina Perfecta", which means, "the complete woman". At FSCW, the "complete woman" had to know how to swim, as students, unless excused for medical reasons, were required to take courses in swimming and be able to swim before they could graduate.
Students in swimming classes, as well as all others using the pool, had to wear special bathing suits and swimming caps. According to Dr. Fox, who taught physical education including swimming, the swimming suits were made by the Aldrich company. The life guards were the only ones allowed to wear red ones. Others wore other colors. Each student was issued a freshly laundered suit when they came to swim. The students brought their own caps. Bess Lux, a former FSCW student of the early forties describes those suits as "tacky, tacky one-piece garnet colored heavy cotton knit tank suits that took forever to dry". She said that in them "everything showed and that with the atrocious rubber white bathing caps it made the students look like a bunch of cooters". Another former student complained about the suits saying that they "did not cover what they ought to where they should". Even when the school became coeducational in 1947 and named, "The Florida State University" some of the rules persisted and students had to wear the special bathing suits if they swam in Montgomery gym. A female student of the early fifties also recently voiced complaints about the bathing suits. She said that lady swimmers would remain in the pool until all males had left the area for fear of being seen in those "dreadful suits". Another early fifties student said that "those of us who were well endowed always got swimming suits that were too small".
Former FSCW and FSU students also remember the "angel robes" they were given to wear back to the dressing room when they turned in the suits in the "drying room" after swimming. An "angel robe" consisted of two large towels stitched together at the top corners so that they could be worn as a garment.
Telegraphic Swimming Competition
The new pool's opening in the mid thirties also opened the door to national and intercollegiate swimming at Florida State. Women students at FSCW and many other women's colleges were for the most part discouraged from traveling off campus to participate in intercollegiate athletics. However, in 1934, something called "telegraphic swimming competition" developed in some of the women's colleges. In a specified time frame, on a number of women's campuses, swimmers would swim certain events in their own campus pools. The results would then be telegraphed to a central location where the results would be compared and winners would be declared. In that way, a method was found for women college swimmers to compete regionally or nationally. The new pool enabled FSCW to participate in that competition.
Katherine Rawls
When Katherine Rawls, a nineteen year old diver and swimmer from Fort Lauderdale, entered FSCW as a student in the fall of 1936, one week after participating in her second Olympic games, FSCW received a lot of national attention. Rawls had won a silver medal for the USA in springboard diving at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, when she was fourteen, and another in the same event at Berlin in 1936. In addition, at Berlin, she had been on the bronze medal winning 440 meter swimming relay team and finished sixth in the 100 meter freestyle. While an FSCW student in December of 1936, Rawls participated in a swim meet in Fort Lauderdale and set new national records in the breaststroke for 50 yards and for 50 meters. The competition in which the records were broken involved swimmers from 72 colleges and universities and 400 coaches.
Rawls thereafter set a new breaststroke 50-yard world world record at a meet in Cuba. In time, she withdrew from school in order to continue national and international competition. She dominated in swimming and diving. In 1937, the Associated Press selected Rawls as The Female Athlete of the Year. By the time she retired from swimming in 1939, "Katy" as her friends called her, had won fourteen national outdoor and eleven indoor swimming championships, as well as five national diving titles. She also held the world record in the individual medley.
The Tarpon Club
One of the activities that the old pool is best remembered for is the organization known as "The Tarpon Club" that trained and performed there. The Tarpon Club existed at Florida State for fifty-eight years, from 1937 through 1994. Long before synchronized swimming became an Olympic sport, it was an important activity at Florida State.
Before there was a Tarpon Club, the school had a lifesaving corps. To be a member of that corps, a student had to be an excellent swimmer and competent in lifesaving techniques. The members served as lifeguards at Camp Flastacowo as well as at other student swimming excursions.
The headquarters of the lifesaving corps was in the gymnasium and the members trained in the old pool. The practice developed that the lifesaving corps would give demonstrations on proper lifesaving methods and boat handling skills. The demonstrations became popular and in the process, the members of the corps began to add a little "show business" to the events. In time, these efforts became more elaborate and groups of the swimmers would synchronize their efforts into elaborate patterns and procedures. When Katherine Rawls entered FSU in the fall of 1936 she immediately became a member of the lifesaving corps and swam in those demonstrations.
On Thanksgiving morning of 1936, with Rawls' participation, the demonstration held that day reached extraordinary proportions. The program, according to the school year book, included a queen "dressed in white satin and garnet and gold" and a court. There were numerous routines. Rawls gave special presentations of the butterfly breast stroke, plain breast stroke, back stroke and over arm stroke. In addition, the Olympian highlighted a diving program in which her performance was "encored again and again".
In less than a year thereafter, the synchronized portions of the swimming demonstrations had become so popular, that a decision was made in 1937 to form a "water ballet" club to further develop acrobatic swimming. The name of the very active fish found in southern waters, the "Tarpon" was chosen for the team. The club got off to a fast start and soon was taking on new members. One of the early members of the Tarpon Club was Nancy Culp who in later years would be the famous secretary in the hit television series, "The Beverly Hillbillies".
The first Tarpon Club show was held in the pool in the fall of 1937. It was a big hit. Shortly thereafter, Katherine Rawls and several members of the team were invited and performed in the Show of Champions at the National Aquatic Forum in Fort Lauderdale during the Christmas holidays of 1937.
The Tarpon Club attracted so much attention that in 1938 a Hollywood company came down to produce a film of the Fall 1938 show. Unfortunately, the lighting of the Gym was insufficient and the plan was scrubbed. A later plan did work. Someone suggested filming at Wakulla Springs so that natural lighting could be used. Soon much of America was able to enjoy the Tarpons on the silver screen.
More Hollywood activity followed. In 1942, a newsreel was produced featuring the Tarpons. In 1944, the Grantland Rice group filmed another Tarpon show entitled, "Campus Mermaids" and in 1947 there was another newsreel with a Tarpon segment. In 1952, another Grantland Rice film featured the Tarpons. Most of it was filmed at Wakulla Springs but a finale shot was done down at Cypress Gardens in the Florida shaped pool that had been built for Esther Williams movies.
In the meantime, in addition to doing shows in the Montgomery pool and for the movies at Wakulla Springs and Cypress Gardens, the team did some traveling. They performed at shows away from the campus. They always received large crowds and were quite popular. In the mid fifties, the Tarpon Club went international when it performed in Mexico.
In the mid fifties, The Tarpon Club began to compete in the International Academy of Aquatic Art. In addition, the shows became increasingly more spectacular. Unusual lighting effects and enhanced choreography increased the beauty of the presentations. In 1964, a routine was developed entitled "Minstrels". It was later polished and in 1967 at the Triple A Nationals won the highest award, Class One Honors. It was the first time that the Tarpon Club won the top award, but not the last. Two more were won in 1969, one in 1970, two in 1971, and one in 1972. Although in some earlier shows males had made special guest appearances, in 1972, membership in the Tarpon Club became coeducational for the first time when Matt Padgett became the first male member. There would be more. The Tarpon continued winning awards through the years. Coach Alicia Crew lead the club to new heights. In 1989, the club was represented by a team of its members in the U.S. Synchronized Swimming national collegiate championships. Although the event was more of a competitive sports event rather than the aquatic art form that The Tarpon Club utilized, FSU came in fourth in overall points. The last Tarpon Club show was held in 1994. Shortly afterwards, because there was no available competent volunteer coach and no funds to hire one, the club terminated its activities.
Other uses
In addition to housing the Tarpon Club, the old pool had other uses after coeducation came to Florida State in 1947. Courses in swimming continued to be given at the pool to both men and women. Burt Reynolds took a course in swimming in the pool in the early fifties. He is reported to have said that Bim Stults who taught the course was much tougher than his football coaches. The pool was the location for both men's and women's intramural swimming competition. Through the years, the children of many townspeople took lessons and learned to swim in that pool. Students at FSU's demonstration school used the pool in the summers.
Men's Swimming and Diving Team
Along with the Tarpon Club and swimming courses, for a number of years, the pool would be used by the FSU men's swimming and diving team. That pool served as the founding location of the men's swimming and diving team in 1949 and for home meets from then until 1964. Under Coach Bim Stults' leadership, the new FSU team quickly became a power among men's college swimming and diving teams. As early as 1951, the FSU team went undefeated in dual meets over a season. That achievement would be repeated often. At one time, FSU had a twenty-five meet winning streak over a three year period. Stults would coach FSU's team for twenty-five years.
Mike Tschirret, an FSU swimmer in the mid fifties believes that the pool had a built in "home court" advantage as the tiled pool had the "slipperiest walls in the country". In his view, visiting swimmers were jinxed by the thought of having to make turns off the walls of that pool and "no one could beat us at home". The teams records support his claim.
Tschirret said that for the inaugural FSU-University of Florida meet in the old pool, it took only about thirty minutes to run out of tickets. The pool would only seat about 400 in the L-shaped balcony with the concrete step-like seating. Students got free tickets on a first come, first served basis. Some enterprising students who could not get tickets, brought stepladders and placed them on the side of the building so that they could stand on them and look through the windows of the balcony at the activities inside. With that kind of support, the Seminole swimmers and divers won the meet, 66 to 18.
The men's swimming and diving team would continue to use the old pool, until the Fall of 1964 when they moved into the new aquatic center on Woodward Avenue which would later be named for Stults.
Women's Swimming and Diving
The beginning efforts in organizing the FSU women's swimming and diving team also took place in that old pool. In the late 60's and early 70's, the early women's teams trained in the pool. Among their membership were a number of the Tarpon Club members. In the early years, the National Collegiate Athletic Association did not include women's sports. The early women's teams competed under the auspices of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics. In time as the Women's team became more organized it, too, would move much of its training and its meets to the Bim Stults center on Woodward Avenue where it would flourish in the years that followed.
The future
A lot of people learned how to swim in that old pool. It provided a place where Florida State could be involved in the early development of synchronized swimming in this country. It contributed a great deal to the swimming and diving programs at Florida State. The old pool is gone, but the memories are not.