Larry Van Wagner Oral History Transcript
Media
Part of Larry Van Wagner Oral History
content
Interview with:
Larry Van Wagner
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY
Transcribed by Lynn South
For the Marist College Archives and Special Collections
Transcript – Larry Van Wagner
Interviewee
: Larry Van Wagner
Interviewer
: Gus Nolan
Interview Date:
July 14, 2011
Location:
James A. Cannavino Library
Subject Headings:
Van Wagner, Larry
Marist College, Athletics
Marist College, Swimming
Marist College, (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
Summary:
Larry Van Wagner talks about how his childhood interest and skill with
swimming which led him to a career dedicated to coaching the sport. Larry also
discusses how his early involvement in the swimming program at Marist allowed
him to become a major force in shaping how it evolved at Marist.
Larry Van Wagner 1
Gus Nolan
: Today is Thursday, July the fourteenth. We’re having an interview with Larry Van
Wagner, who is our swimming director, or…among many other things… I’ll leave that for who
he is. We’re going to have this interview in the Marist College Library and will be put into the
oral archives. Well, good afternoon, Larry.
Larry Van Wagner:
Good afternoon!
GN
: Larry, there’s like three major phases to this interview: before Marist, Marist…for many
people, there’s an “after Marist,” but you’re a continuation of Marist, which is another fifteen
years after the twenty-year celebration that they give you an award for staying that long [laughs].
So why don’t we start before Marist. Could you give us kind of a thumbnail background of
where you were born, where you grew up, the schools you went to, and maybe I’ll interrupt you
along the way. So you were born in?
LVW
: Born in Poughkeepsie, New York. Right down the road at Vassar Hospital, which is the
facility my mom worked at for twenty-five years. Myself, my brother and sister were all born
there. We lived in Hyde Park, New York. I attended FDR High School, and 1970 graduated, and
went on to Springfield College in Massachusetts.
GN
: Okay, you went a little fast. Before high school, were you in Hyde Park? Were you living in
Hyde Park in your youth?
LVW
: Yes! From, actually, the age of three. We were in Wappingers the first three years.
GN
: I see.
LWV
: But from the age of three and on, my parents still…my mother still resides on Terwilliger
Road in Hyde Park as of today, fifty-six years later.
GN
: And the year of your birth, you don’t have to tell me that, but I just want to get a historical
picture.
Larry Van Wagner 2
LVW
: Sure. 1952. [laughs]
GN
: Fifty-two, ok! Eisenhower became president…
LVW
: He could have! [laughs] Wasn’t sure at the time!
GN
: [laughs] You weren’t there to vote!
LVW
: No.
GN
: I think that was my first election. Moving on…which historical memory of those times
growing up…we were not in Vietnam yet, it was something to come a little later in your life.
LVW
: Yes.
GN
: So, how would you describe those times?
LVW
: Well, Hyde Park was a tremendous place to live in the fifties, and in the sixties. It was a
much smaller community, obviously, than it is today. We could ride our bikes, when we were old
enough, we could ride our bikes anywhere in the town. And it was a swimming facility called
Amar Swimming Facility where I learned how to swim. In fact, I remember distinctly how it
took me three opportunities to get out of the beginner’s swimming class. So I don’t know if that
was a motivating factor for my eventual career choice or not, but I’ve developed friends with
other families in the Hyde Park area, whose children were also involved in the sport of
swimming. Obviously, there were not many facilities. There were never a swimming facility in
the Hyde Park school district, so that made it even more difficult for us to find venues in which
to continue if we wanted to progress in competitive swimming, which I eventually got into full
time, when I was around fifteen, sixteen years of age. And then at that time, I believe it was
when I was sixteen, in the middle to late sixties, there was a group of families, seventy I believe
in total. Of which my family was one of which, and we all got together and sponsored the
creation of Hyde Park Swim and Tennis Club. So we were one of the founding, or original
Larry Van Wagner 3
members that built that facility. And that’s really where I think my introduction and my
commitment to the sport of swimming took off, because at that time I was employed there as a
lifeguard, I swam there as a competitive swimmer. I eventually coached there.
GN
: Was there an indoor facility there as well?
LVW
: No, it was strictly outdoors, so it was a summer season only facility. And I would spend
from dawn to dusk; my mom would drop me off at the rising of the sun, and pick me up at the
setting of the sun every single day throughout those first few summers. But then as I got to my
junior year, and I had really explored my opportunities and all of the team sports that were a part
of the school district, like football and wrestling and crew, at the time. And obviously I have
some very fond memories of the people I interacted with, and the coaches especially, while I was
in the Hyde Park school district. But I finally came to the realization that I didn’t have a
tremendous amount of potential in those team sports. Swimming was something I was just
naturally good at. So in my junior year of high school I decided to do swimming year round, and
again, understanding how dry—that was the definition we used to describe the Hudson Valley—
it was a very dry county when it comes to competitive swimming pools. And the only indoor one
that was really a true competitive facility was the Poughkeepsie YMCA. But not the old YMCA,
I’m talking about the new one, which did not open until the late sixties. I mean, I swam in the old
one on Market Street, which I believe is a social service facility for Dutchess County. But we
started with the opening of the new YMCA eventually, the first year, and that was my senior
year, I believe, in high school. At the time, it was a family called the Kennedy family, which was
well known in the competitive swimming circles, in the entire northeast region. Because all those
kids swam, they had five kids that swam.
GN
: Were they…was he mayor of the town?
Larry Van Wagner 4
LVW
: Jack Kennedy eventually became mayor, but that was after I had already left for college.
But yes, Jack Kennedy I swam for, and his wife, for the entire twelve month season. And I did
that for the last two years of high school, and I can still remember today sitting in the lobby of, at
that time, the new Poughkeepsie YMCA, and I asked Mr. Kennedy, “Well, look, I’d like to
continue swimming in college, and I think I also want to major in physical education. Where
would you suggest I go?” And I can still see myself sitting there, and seeing him tell me: “Well
you know, there’s this small private school in Massachusetts that has an outstanding, nationally
recognized physical education program, called Springfield College. And the swimming coach
there is actually world renowned, his name is Charles Silvia.” That’s where I ended up going.
Stayed for an undergraduate and graduate career, I was an assistant coach to coach Silvia in my
fifth year at Springfield College, came out with an undergraduate degree in P.E. and a master’s
degree in administration. And again, came back to Marist…I’d worked in the IBM, because my
dad—that was the other childhood thought, that everybody on my block worked for IBM. All the
dads worked for IBM and they all carpooled. So my dad worked for IBM for over thirty years,
and because of that relationship, I worked for the IBM country clubs, I worked for a season here
in Poughkeepsie, I worked for the last my senior year up in Kingston. And it was after my tour,
so to speak, at the Kingston IBM swimming facility that I had my two job offers. I took the one
as an aquatic director and swimming coach for the YMCA on the eastern shore of Maryland.
GN
: Okay. It’s amazing to see someone so focused from the early years of grade school, and
high school for sure, and absolutely college, to stay on the same point, you know.
LVW
: I agree, I think it’s truly unusual today. I don’t think we had as many opportunities back
then, or as many distractions back then. So for whatever reason, I knew early in life, probably
Larry Van Wagner 5
before my high school years, that I wanted to do something either in physical education, or
athletics, or a combination of both. I also…
GN
: That probably—Go ahead.
LVW
: Probably determined that after my student teaching experience at Springfield, it wasn’t in
the elementary, and it wasn’t in the secondary school district. I wanted to be a college coach.
GN
: Outside of golf, I guess, few people stay on the same course. There’s a love for it, you’re
good at it, so you stay with it. And I think you’re kind of…you’re saying…Things that I’m
putting down here are not pertinent now, because I was going to say did you have any work
opportunities or hobbies or so on…It’s pretty much water [laughs].
LVW
: Yes it was, it was all aquatic related, for whatever reason [laughs]. So, you know, small
world, and my youngest son becomes a part of the US Navy. [laughs] And here I am, still
involved with the water to some extent.
GN
: Okay, let’s come to this thing I’m calling “Coming to Marist.” As a Hyde Park youngster,
then having seen other colleges like those in New England and Massachusetts and Maryland,
what is it that brought you—Marist was not very well-known and we didn’t have much of a
campus here. So there must have been some spark that brought you back.
LVW
: Sure. Again, as I told you previously, that my only experience with Marist College was
running up and down North Road, during my two years that I rowed for Scott Sanford at
Roosevelt High School. That was for conditioning purposes only. And never having step foot on
the college, I knew the college was here, but I didn’t know anything about the school at that
time. And then before I left for my first
real
job, so to speak, down in Maryland…I knew that the
college was building an athletic facility called the James McCann Center. And in that facility,
there would be a pool. But I don’t think I saw the schematics of that facility, I’m not sure exactly
Larry Van Wagner 6
what it would look like. I knew that they would have a position, an aquatic director’s position
that would eventually evolve into a swimming coach’s position. So I sought out Howard Golden,
gave him my name and my resume at the time, and he kept me up to date as construction went
along. And within nine months, I’m back here.
GN
: Was…the relationship with Howie must have grown too.
LVW
: Oh, without a doubt.
GN
: Just came in the front door. Howie’s a nice guy, but he can be pretty rough. [laughs]
LVW
: [laughs] He’s been very nice to me from day one, whether he looked at me through a
different lens or not, I mean I looked at him, obviously, as another mentor in my life. And I think
I got that understanding from the day we first sat down and talked.
GN
: Then you applied for the position to Howie, he was the athletic director at the time.
LVW
: That’s correct.
GN
: Were you interviewed with anyone else? Linus Foy or Tony [Campilii], or anyone else talk
to you?
LVW
: Not that I can remember. Ron [Pietro] probably would have been the other person,
because their plan at the time was: once the McCann Center opened, Ron would become the
acting athletic director, and Howard would stay on as the director for physical education.
GN
: I see.
LVW
: So I’m sure I’ve met Ron, I just don’t remember it at the time. It was just Howard.
Because I was basically going out of town at the time. When I came back for the interview, I’m
sure that Ron was involved in the process as well.
GN
: And Howie also had an academic position.
LVW
: Yes he did.
Larry Van Wagner 7
GN
: He taught classes and…
LVW
: Yes he did.
GN
: His Ph.D., and so that gave him another wing of operation, as it were. The position then…
what were you… contracted to do?
LVW
: Well, when I first came on campus, it was June 1, 1976. The McCann Center was still far
from being finished. That was the projected date, but it took another twelve months for them to
actually finish the entire facility. Which, again, didn’t give me an opportunity to teach, or really,
to coach collegiate competitive swimming, but it gave me other opportunities, and that was into
administration… with the upcoming expansion of the athletic department, the purchasing of all
the equipment that would go into the McCann center, some of the construction…I could change
because I had gotten there early enough. There were small things, small details that I could
change within the swimming facility to make it more effective before it actually opened. So I, for
whatever reason, thought that was a great experience to see it being built basically from the
ground up.
GN
: Yes…and then…just at the beginning there, who put that up…
LVW
: That was Louis Greenspan. He was the general contractor, and Paul [Canaan] was the
architect.
GN
: Right, Paul [Canaan]. I have some other stories about Paul, he had a little estate…not estate,
a home.
LVW
: Is that right.
GN
: A friend of mine, Larry Sullivan, lived in there for a while, he [fades out]. Moving on!
Years at Marist. Overall, your position has changed somewhat, would you say?
Larry Van Wagner 8
LVW
: It has changed, and I’m probably mostly responsible for the changes that have been made.
Originally, as an aquatic director, as with Ron, and with Howard, and with Bill Austin my
predecessor, we really had three hats that we wore, three areas of responsibility. We were all
administrators to some extent, to one extent or another, we were all teachers. We were all
physical education majors with teaching certificates, so we all taught as well, and then finally we
were all coaches. So we wore all three hats, which was vastly different, obviously, than the
individuals who occupy the athletic department here at Marist College. That’s all… basically I’m
the last of the Mohicans when it comes to those types of responsibilities. I even dropped my own
teaching responsibilities with the help of my athletic director at the time, [Gene Doris]. We
dropped it from my resume, or my duties and responsibilities, because of everything that was
being thrown in.
GN
: Alright. Then let’s just talk about the swimming thing. Describe what’s involved there. The
teams or how does it happen? Do you recruit?
LVW
: It took a period of time. I must say, though, when I came here in 1976, and not having a
pool in which to recruit for, or a team to recruit for, I did no recruiting for some time, actually.
Even though the pool opened in the spring of 1977, it was obviously beyond the deadline for
deposits, so there was no recruiting even done at that point in time. There was no need to,
because we actually weren’t sure when we were going to be open and in operation. So really the
first thing that came about with the McCann Center were teaching P.E. classes, beginner
swimming and lifeguard training classes that we had. And springboard diving, at times we would
have that… eventually we had a scuba program that went on. So we didn’t have anything really,
the first year the McCann Center was open, in terms of competition swimming; we started a club
program, that’s usually where you start, to find out what sort of student interest there is. And that
Larry Van Wagner 9
was done in 1978, we were a club program. We really did not become a varsity program until
1979. And at that time, we were co-ed, because the interest of the students was both male and
female in origin, so we had a co-ed program, which was truly unusual because all of the
conference affiliations we had were with male-oriented sports. So I had a co-ed team that I was
coaching, competing against the male teams; and we did that for five years, until 1983. And only
in 1983 did we then split the program. We had enough interest from both the men and the
women to split the program up into separate teams.
GN
: The day Marist opened the McCann Center, we can use the expression “the dedication,”
there was an exhibit at the pool, and there were diving.
LVW
: Yes there was. There were divers, our diver’s name was Dave Lang, who I went to
Springfield and I was a team member with…And Dave was actually in my wedding, Jenny and
my wedding party. So he and Sue Peterson, no I’m sorry, Sue Sylvia was his fiancée at the time,
and Sue was the daughter of my college coach Charles Sylvia.
GN
: Oh, so I see. They were the ones…
LVW
: Dave was the one giving the exhibition.
GN
: As things stand now, how does the swimming operation go? Do you go out and recruit
students to come, or do students come in the door and say “I’d like to be on the swimming
team”?
LVW
: I always believed that to be an honest recruiter, because I believe there are a lot of
coaches that are—in all sports today, that are not truly honest about meeting the needs of the
student athletes. I think some of them sometimes perform like used car salesmen than they do
honest representatives of the institution. So my personal philosophy has always been to recruit
those student athletes that have found Marist college first; what need do they think or believe that
Larry Van Wagner 10
Marist College will meet in their college undergraduate experience. And so those are the
individuals that we go out and make contact with. They’ve made first contact with us, and then
we’ll continue to dialogue from there, until they get to the point where they have narrowed down
their choices of colleges. So today we have a software, a database, because we’re dealing now
with over one hundred student athletes that are in my database for the 2012 class, freshman class
that will come in.
GN
: Is that so?
LVW
: [hum of agreement]
GN
: And…therefore there are cuts. Not everybody makes it who would like to.
LVW
: Yes, because we have, again…it’s interesting, because many people thought at the
opening of the McCann Center that Marist had this Olympic-sized facility, and it’s not even
close, really…pure honesty, it’s not even close to being an Olympic-sized facility. The
competition part of our swimming facility is just a normal, minimal NCAA limited twenty-five
yard, six lane facility, that’s what we have. Which most every college, in college swimming,
especially in Division One, we’re all working in the same minimum facility. The one advantage
that Marist has is the diving well; we have a very nice diving well which is a forty foot by forty
foot diving well, beyond the swimming competition’s area. So that allows our divers to compete,
and basically to practice at the same time that we are swimming competitively, which makes it a
much closer relationship between our swimming and diving contingents. But because of the
facility, to answer your question, we have to limit the size of the roster. So right now I limit it to
twenty swimmers. Twenty male, twenty female, forty swimmers total, because that’s all we can
physically fit into our pool at one time.
GN
: Sidebar. Do you have anything to do with clubs? Swimming and all that?
Larry Van Wagner 11
LVW
: Yes. I’m glad you asked me that. That was basically the first program I started, was the
Marist Swim Club. It’s a USS program, it’s an age group program, so we have them coming in
as young as five, and we have them staying as old as… I’ve had twenty-seven and twenty-eight
year olds! Still competing, even on a national level with a USS Club; United States Swimming is
what USS stands for. So I start at the club, and again, they were part of the opening ceremonies
back in 1977 when we opened the doors to the McCann Center. I had the Marist Swim Club; that
was the first day that they officially started their relationship with Marist College. So we came
in, I conducted a practice during the dedication ceremonies, along with my friend Dave Lang
doing the diving at the other end. And that was the start of the USS program here at the college.
And I started that with the help of Ron [Pietro], and Doctor Linus Foy.
GN
: Is it still operative?
LVW
: Still operating today, thirty-five years later.
GN
: How big a program is it?
LVW
: We, again, manage it in terms of size, so we’ve had approximately seventy-five young
men and women from the Hudson Valley.
GN
: Yeah, I think that was part of the underlying…That we were going to provide an
opportunity for the neighborhood youths.
LVW
: That’s correct, that was the understanding we had with the McCann foundation at the
time, is that we’re going to have the doors open to the community, and in some way service their
needs. And again, being from the community… as a former club swimmer, I knew there was a
tremendous need to have a professionally directed, but also a college controlled age group
swimming program in the Hudson Valley. And that’s another reason why we started the Marist
Swim Club. And thank God we did.
Larry Van Wagner 12
GN
: Yes…There’s a hundred questions going through my mind about it [laughs]. Do you give
scholarships?
LVW
: We do! We didn’t start them until the nineties. So from the late seventies to the early
nineties, we were operating with no athletic scholarship money, which is what—in the NCAA’s
eyes—they would define us as a division three program; even though the college was division
one since 1980. The only sport that competed with the scholarship support was basketball. The
rest of us had no scholarship support until the nineties.
GN
: That’s…That’s one…Another question: How do you go about…or does nature itself, or the
enthusiasm of the participants…How do you get the drive to keep coming to practice? The
water’s all cold sometimes in the morning, or even in the afternoon. But most people, it seems to
me, come to swim, they’re dedicated to it.
LVW
: You have to be. You absolutely have to be, because swimming may be unlike many other
sports. It’s not a team sport, it’s considered an individual sport. Much of the motivation has to
come from within. When you get in the pool and practice, and you submerge your head, below
the surface of the water, there is nobody else there. There’s not a team, really, to support you or
motivate you or to help you establish your personal goals, and motivate you to achieve those
personal goals. That’s why I think swimmers, in particular, are the greatest goal setters and
achievers that we have in college athletics, because they do it themselves.
GN
: It reminds me of cross-country running, or something like that. Just to get out there…
LVW
: Same experience.
GN
: And do it in the cold of the morning.
LVW
: And the other thing too is, because our sport is so aerobically demanding, we have to put
more time in. Which many of the student athletes at Marist are amazed at how much time the
Larry Van Wagner 13
swimmers put in to their preparation. Our kids…we are basically training, or, they are required to
train twenty hours a week. And on top of that, we have, because of the nature of the sport, the
longest collegiate season in college athletics; its twenty-four weeks long, that we’re going twenty
hours of commitment, which is…a pretty large commitment. It’d be no different than having
almost a part time or full time job and still be a student.
GN:
Okay…Do you travel much?
LVW
: We don’t have to travel thankfully, because now that the college decided to go into this—
our most recent athletic conference, the MAAC Conference, we did that in 1995. Swimming
actually was actually the first sport at Marist to go into the MAAC Conference. We were in it for
two years before the rest of the athletic department was allowed to come in, because they still
had prior commitments to the northeast conference at the time. So we were the first sport to
compete in the MAAC and we did so for two years. But thankfully because of that relationship,
we now had a secured and maintained dual meet schedule, as well as a championship meet
schedule. Prior to that, we were in a conference called the Metropolitan Swimming and Diving
Conference, specifically, I think, only to our sport.
GN
: Do you have any problems with attendance, or is that the same question that…the
motivation of the student to come…he’ll come on his own.
LVW:
You know, we set the demands right off the bat during the recruiting process; every
student athlete that is looking at Marist College is told “these are the requirements to be a
member of the men’s or the women’s swimming and diving program.” So they know well ahead
of time, coming in that commitment that’s going to be demanded of them before they even step
foot on the campus. So, no. To answer your question, no, I don’t have any problem with
attendance [laughs].
Larry Van Wagner 14
GN
: They know the name of the game!
LVW
: They do, they do!
GN
: How many coaches do you have?
LVW
: Part time. I’m the only full time person on the aquatic staff. So right now we have
Melanie [Bolstad], who is a diver and a P.E. major at the University of Maryland. Her husband is
Rick [Bolstad], who was an IBM-er, an engineer at IBM, and they relocated to the Hudson
Valley. And Rick was a diver at Syracuse University, so they’re both former athletes, they’re
both competing on a rather grand scale in division one athletics and diving. And they relocated to
Highland, New York, and found out during their transition that there was a pool at Marist
College, so [laughs] they sought out the facility… like “go where the water is!” They sought out
Marist College and got involved in our US diving club. And that was over twenty-two years ago.
It’s ironic that today, their middle son, Brian, just graduated from Marist College as the most
successful diver in the history of our program. It recognizes the male athlete of the year, here at
Marist College.
GN
: That’s…Its funny, I have to ask you these things because I don’t know them off the top of
my head.
LVW
: Of course, of course.
GN
: And when I go through the list about…Who are the people in athletics and what are their
roles, I see some names, and I don’t quite fit in…It doesn’t, you know…Swimming coach or
assistant coach or…There’s a woman, or a second woman, there was a Sullivan here, I don’t
know if she’s still with us…
LVW
: No, she was a former swimmer here at the college, and actually married one of the
assistant athletic directors, who became an athletic director at a private division three school in
Larry Van Wagner 15
Rhode Island. So Stephanie was only with us for one year as an assistant coach. But the other
person I have to mention besides Melanie is Kyle [O’Neal], Kyle’s a local, a resident of
Poughkeepsie, attended Poughkeepsie High School, again, swam for the Marist Swim
Club…Again, see…We get a lot of things out of the Marist Swim Club, not just for the
community, but mostly for Marist College…There are a lot of assets that we’ve been given in
response to the club. Kyle was a member of the Marist Swim Club, he joined us his freshman
year in high school; eventually came to Marist College, represented the Red Foxes for four years
and became a conference champion during his time here; stayed in the area, volunteer coached
the college program for another ten years; and in the last eight years, we’ve been able to pay him
a salary [laughs]. But again, a part-time person in the program, and people like Kyle being here
and being involved with us for fifteen years, and Melanie for twenty-two years now, it’s…
GN
: It’s unique, you know. I have to hear you say this because I don’t know it.
LVW
: Without a doubt, a major asset to our successes over the years.
GB
: Let me ask about that, because…Let’s talk about your successes…I mean, just to be in the
game is sufficient as far as you’re concerned. And so, were there some competitions that you
were particularly successful in, in terms of…There are all kinds of awards and trophies hanging
around the Marist swim pool…What comes to your mind in the category of ‘successful wins’?
LVW
: Well I would say again that our introduction to the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference
was a huge step for us, because we were really the forgotten cousins of athletics here, because
again, we were in a conference that was totally separated and just hatched from the Marist
College athletic conference at the time. So we were competing in a conference that really no one
ever heard of or knew anything about, and because of that, probably most of our successes were
less appreciated. But because of the fact that we’re now competing against the other schools, that
Larry Van Wagner 16
most of our other sports are competing against, and that has an added value, I think. And more so
an input to the success of the entire department now. So since becoming a member of the
Metropolitan Athletic Conference, our men and women have won twenty four conference
championships. Prior to that, they were in the Metropolitan Conference, having won four
conference crowns there. And probably the highlight of the conference level championships
would be the two EC/AC championships that the women’s team has won in the last four years.
And I say that because it’s more of a regional… you know, we can evaluate our successes only
within our conference, the MAAC conference. But now the EC/AC, which, again, is a unique
situation, it’s a regional conference that encompasses every conference from Maine to Virginia;
we’re able to see schools that we’ve never seen before, and compete directly against them. And
again to reevaluate
how do we stand
as a MAAC school against the Big Ten…not the Big Tens
but the Big East, the Ivy League, the Atlantic Ten schools. And the EC/AC championships has
afforded us to do that. So it gives me a greater perspective of our success.
GN
: Now putting that in focus, when you say twenty four, is that one a year for twenty four
years? Or two or three a year?
LVW
: Well you can win two a year because you have a men’s championship and you have a
women’s championship. And for the first ten years the men won every MAAC conference
championship. But in the last fifteen years, they’ve won twelve total. And the women have won
twelve total. It’s amazing how they’re both equal in their terms of their levels of successes.
They’ve both won a dozen MAAC conferences in the last fifteen years.
GN
: To turn the page a little bit…Some disappointments? [pause] You’re very optimistic, but I
was just thinking…
Larry Van Wagner 17
LVW:
I think because the only disappointments are—as a coach, and I like to consider myself a
professional coach, because that is my background, from my education to my experience…Is
that my sole purpose in life, my number one goal is to help every individual try to realize their
potential to the fullest. The problem with that is that you also need a student athlete that has the
same frame of mind, and you don’t always get that on any level of coaching. There are many
student athletes along the road as we take this journey through life that, as I could see, had
tremendous individual potential within them. And because they didn’t have the same dedication
and commitment to the sport, we never realized that; and those are
my
failures. I consider them
my failures as well.
GN
: Well… true. I taught English and poetry, and they talk about a tree… And is it obvious to
you which way
Interview Cuts off at This Point
Larry Van Wagner
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY
Transcribed by Lynn South
For the Marist College Archives and Special Collections
Transcript – Larry Van Wagner
Interviewee
: Larry Van Wagner
Interviewer
: Gus Nolan
Interview Date:
July 14, 2011
Location:
James A. Cannavino Library
Subject Headings:
Van Wagner, Larry
Marist College, Athletics
Marist College, Swimming
Marist College, (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)
Summary:
Larry Van Wagner talks about how his childhood interest and skill with
swimming which led him to a career dedicated to coaching the sport. Larry also
discusses how his early involvement in the swimming program at Marist allowed
him to become a major force in shaping how it evolved at Marist.
Larry Van Wagner 1
Gus Nolan
: Today is Thursday, July the fourteenth. We’re having an interview with Larry Van
Wagner, who is our swimming director, or…among many other things… I’ll leave that for who
he is. We’re going to have this interview in the Marist College Library and will be put into the
oral archives. Well, good afternoon, Larry.
Larry Van Wagner:
Good afternoon!
GN
: Larry, there’s like three major phases to this interview: before Marist, Marist…for many
people, there’s an “after Marist,” but you’re a continuation of Marist, which is another fifteen
years after the twenty-year celebration that they give you an award for staying that long [laughs].
So why don’t we start before Marist. Could you give us kind of a thumbnail background of
where you were born, where you grew up, the schools you went to, and maybe I’ll interrupt you
along the way. So you were born in?
LVW
: Born in Poughkeepsie, New York. Right down the road at Vassar Hospital, which is the
facility my mom worked at for twenty-five years. Myself, my brother and sister were all born
there. We lived in Hyde Park, New York. I attended FDR High School, and 1970 graduated, and
went on to Springfield College in Massachusetts.
GN
: Okay, you went a little fast. Before high school, were you in Hyde Park? Were you living in
Hyde Park in your youth?
LVW
: Yes! From, actually, the age of three. We were in Wappingers the first three years.
GN
: I see.
LWV
: But from the age of three and on, my parents still…my mother still resides on Terwilliger
Road in Hyde Park as of today, fifty-six years later.
GN
: And the year of your birth, you don’t have to tell me that, but I just want to get a historical
picture.
Larry Van Wagner 2
LVW
: Sure. 1952. [laughs]
GN
: Fifty-two, ok! Eisenhower became president…
LVW
: He could have! [laughs] Wasn’t sure at the time!
GN
: [laughs] You weren’t there to vote!
LVW
: No.
GN
: I think that was my first election. Moving on…which historical memory of those times
growing up…we were not in Vietnam yet, it was something to come a little later in your life.
LVW
: Yes.
GN
: So, how would you describe those times?
LVW
: Well, Hyde Park was a tremendous place to live in the fifties, and in the sixties. It was a
much smaller community, obviously, than it is today. We could ride our bikes, when we were old
enough, we could ride our bikes anywhere in the town. And it was a swimming facility called
Amar Swimming Facility where I learned how to swim. In fact, I remember distinctly how it
took me three opportunities to get out of the beginner’s swimming class. So I don’t know if that
was a motivating factor for my eventual career choice or not, but I’ve developed friends with
other families in the Hyde Park area, whose children were also involved in the sport of
swimming. Obviously, there were not many facilities. There were never a swimming facility in
the Hyde Park school district, so that made it even more difficult for us to find venues in which
to continue if we wanted to progress in competitive swimming, which I eventually got into full
time, when I was around fifteen, sixteen years of age. And then at that time, I believe it was
when I was sixteen, in the middle to late sixties, there was a group of families, seventy I believe
in total. Of which my family was one of which, and we all got together and sponsored the
creation of Hyde Park Swim and Tennis Club. So we were one of the founding, or original
Larry Van Wagner 3
members that built that facility. And that’s really where I think my introduction and my
commitment to the sport of swimming took off, because at that time I was employed there as a
lifeguard, I swam there as a competitive swimmer. I eventually coached there.
GN
: Was there an indoor facility there as well?
LVW
: No, it was strictly outdoors, so it was a summer season only facility. And I would spend
from dawn to dusk; my mom would drop me off at the rising of the sun, and pick me up at the
setting of the sun every single day throughout those first few summers. But then as I got to my
junior year, and I had really explored my opportunities and all of the team sports that were a part
of the school district, like football and wrestling and crew, at the time. And obviously I have
some very fond memories of the people I interacted with, and the coaches especially, while I was
in the Hyde Park school district. But I finally came to the realization that I didn’t have a
tremendous amount of potential in those team sports. Swimming was something I was just
naturally good at. So in my junior year of high school I decided to do swimming year round, and
again, understanding how dry—that was the definition we used to describe the Hudson Valley—
it was a very dry county when it comes to competitive swimming pools. And the only indoor one
that was really a true competitive facility was the Poughkeepsie YMCA. But not the old YMCA,
I’m talking about the new one, which did not open until the late sixties. I mean, I swam in the old
one on Market Street, which I believe is a social service facility for Dutchess County. But we
started with the opening of the new YMCA eventually, the first year, and that was my senior
year, I believe, in high school. At the time, it was a family called the Kennedy family, which was
well known in the competitive swimming circles, in the entire northeast region. Because all those
kids swam, they had five kids that swam.
GN
: Were they…was he mayor of the town?
Larry Van Wagner 4
LVW
: Jack Kennedy eventually became mayor, but that was after I had already left for college.
But yes, Jack Kennedy I swam for, and his wife, for the entire twelve month season. And I did
that for the last two years of high school, and I can still remember today sitting in the lobby of, at
that time, the new Poughkeepsie YMCA, and I asked Mr. Kennedy, “Well, look, I’d like to
continue swimming in college, and I think I also want to major in physical education. Where
would you suggest I go?” And I can still see myself sitting there, and seeing him tell me: “Well
you know, there’s this small private school in Massachusetts that has an outstanding, nationally
recognized physical education program, called Springfield College. And the swimming coach
there is actually world renowned, his name is Charles Silvia.” That’s where I ended up going.
Stayed for an undergraduate and graduate career, I was an assistant coach to coach Silvia in my
fifth year at Springfield College, came out with an undergraduate degree in P.E. and a master’s
degree in administration. And again, came back to Marist…I’d worked in the IBM, because my
dad—that was the other childhood thought, that everybody on my block worked for IBM. All the
dads worked for IBM and they all carpooled. So my dad worked for IBM for over thirty years,
and because of that relationship, I worked for the IBM country clubs, I worked for a season here
in Poughkeepsie, I worked for the last my senior year up in Kingston. And it was after my tour,
so to speak, at the Kingston IBM swimming facility that I had my two job offers. I took the one
as an aquatic director and swimming coach for the YMCA on the eastern shore of Maryland.
GN
: Okay. It’s amazing to see someone so focused from the early years of grade school, and
high school for sure, and absolutely college, to stay on the same point, you know.
LVW
: I agree, I think it’s truly unusual today. I don’t think we had as many opportunities back
then, or as many distractions back then. So for whatever reason, I knew early in life, probably
Larry Van Wagner 5
before my high school years, that I wanted to do something either in physical education, or
athletics, or a combination of both. I also…
GN
: That probably—Go ahead.
LVW
: Probably determined that after my student teaching experience at Springfield, it wasn’t in
the elementary, and it wasn’t in the secondary school district. I wanted to be a college coach.
GN
: Outside of golf, I guess, few people stay on the same course. There’s a love for it, you’re
good at it, so you stay with it. And I think you’re kind of…you’re saying…Things that I’m
putting down here are not pertinent now, because I was going to say did you have any work
opportunities or hobbies or so on…It’s pretty much water [laughs].
LVW
: Yes it was, it was all aquatic related, for whatever reason [laughs]. So, you know, small
world, and my youngest son becomes a part of the US Navy. [laughs] And here I am, still
involved with the water to some extent.
GN
: Okay, let’s come to this thing I’m calling “Coming to Marist.” As a Hyde Park youngster,
then having seen other colleges like those in New England and Massachusetts and Maryland,
what is it that brought you—Marist was not very well-known and we didn’t have much of a
campus here. So there must have been some spark that brought you back.
LVW
: Sure. Again, as I told you previously, that my only experience with Marist College was
running up and down North Road, during my two years that I rowed for Scott Sanford at
Roosevelt High School. That was for conditioning purposes only. And never having step foot on
the college, I knew the college was here, but I didn’t know anything about the school at that
time. And then before I left for my first
real
job, so to speak, down in Maryland…I knew that the
college was building an athletic facility called the James McCann Center. And in that facility,
there would be a pool. But I don’t think I saw the schematics of that facility, I’m not sure exactly
Larry Van Wagner 6
what it would look like. I knew that they would have a position, an aquatic director’s position
that would eventually evolve into a swimming coach’s position. So I sought out Howard Golden,
gave him my name and my resume at the time, and he kept me up to date as construction went
along. And within nine months, I’m back here.
GN
: Was…the relationship with Howie must have grown too.
LVW
: Oh, without a doubt.
GN
: Just came in the front door. Howie’s a nice guy, but he can be pretty rough. [laughs]
LVW
: [laughs] He’s been very nice to me from day one, whether he looked at me through a
different lens or not, I mean I looked at him, obviously, as another mentor in my life. And I think
I got that understanding from the day we first sat down and talked.
GN
: Then you applied for the position to Howie, he was the athletic director at the time.
LVW
: That’s correct.
GN
: Were you interviewed with anyone else? Linus Foy or Tony [Campilii], or anyone else talk
to you?
LVW
: Not that I can remember. Ron [Pietro] probably would have been the other person,
because their plan at the time was: once the McCann Center opened, Ron would become the
acting athletic director, and Howard would stay on as the director for physical education.
GN
: I see.
LVW
: So I’m sure I’ve met Ron, I just don’t remember it at the time. It was just Howard.
Because I was basically going out of town at the time. When I came back for the interview, I’m
sure that Ron was involved in the process as well.
GN
: And Howie also had an academic position.
LVW
: Yes he did.
Larry Van Wagner 7
GN
: He taught classes and…
LVW
: Yes he did.
GN
: His Ph.D., and so that gave him another wing of operation, as it were. The position then…
what were you… contracted to do?
LVW
: Well, when I first came on campus, it was June 1, 1976. The McCann Center was still far
from being finished. That was the projected date, but it took another twelve months for them to
actually finish the entire facility. Which, again, didn’t give me an opportunity to teach, or really,
to coach collegiate competitive swimming, but it gave me other opportunities, and that was into
administration… with the upcoming expansion of the athletic department, the purchasing of all
the equipment that would go into the McCann center, some of the construction…I could change
because I had gotten there early enough. There were small things, small details that I could
change within the swimming facility to make it more effective before it actually opened. So I, for
whatever reason, thought that was a great experience to see it being built basically from the
ground up.
GN
: Yes…and then…just at the beginning there, who put that up…
LVW
: That was Louis Greenspan. He was the general contractor, and Paul [Canaan] was the
architect.
GN
: Right, Paul [Canaan]. I have some other stories about Paul, he had a little estate…not estate,
a home.
LVW
: Is that right.
GN
: A friend of mine, Larry Sullivan, lived in there for a while, he [fades out]. Moving on!
Years at Marist. Overall, your position has changed somewhat, would you say?
Larry Van Wagner 8
LVW
: It has changed, and I’m probably mostly responsible for the changes that have been made.
Originally, as an aquatic director, as with Ron, and with Howard, and with Bill Austin my
predecessor, we really had three hats that we wore, three areas of responsibility. We were all
administrators to some extent, to one extent or another, we were all teachers. We were all
physical education majors with teaching certificates, so we all taught as well, and then finally we
were all coaches. So we wore all three hats, which was vastly different, obviously, than the
individuals who occupy the athletic department here at Marist College. That’s all… basically I’m
the last of the Mohicans when it comes to those types of responsibilities. I even dropped my own
teaching responsibilities with the help of my athletic director at the time, [Gene Doris]. We
dropped it from my resume, or my duties and responsibilities, because of everything that was
being thrown in.
GN
: Alright. Then let’s just talk about the swimming thing. Describe what’s involved there. The
teams or how does it happen? Do you recruit?
LVW
: It took a period of time. I must say, though, when I came here in 1976, and not having a
pool in which to recruit for, or a team to recruit for, I did no recruiting for some time, actually.
Even though the pool opened in the spring of 1977, it was obviously beyond the deadline for
deposits, so there was no recruiting even done at that point in time. There was no need to,
because we actually weren’t sure when we were going to be open and in operation. So really the
first thing that came about with the McCann Center were teaching P.E. classes, beginner
swimming and lifeguard training classes that we had. And springboard diving, at times we would
have that… eventually we had a scuba program that went on. So we didn’t have anything really,
the first year the McCann Center was open, in terms of competition swimming; we started a club
program, that’s usually where you start, to find out what sort of student interest there is. And that
Larry Van Wagner 9
was done in 1978, we were a club program. We really did not become a varsity program until
1979. And at that time, we were co-ed, because the interest of the students was both male and
female in origin, so we had a co-ed program, which was truly unusual because all of the
conference affiliations we had were with male-oriented sports. So I had a co-ed team that I was
coaching, competing against the male teams; and we did that for five years, until 1983. And only
in 1983 did we then split the program. We had enough interest from both the men and the
women to split the program up into separate teams.
GN
: The day Marist opened the McCann Center, we can use the expression “the dedication,”
there was an exhibit at the pool, and there were diving.
LVW
: Yes there was. There were divers, our diver’s name was Dave Lang, who I went to
Springfield and I was a team member with…And Dave was actually in my wedding, Jenny and
my wedding party. So he and Sue Peterson, no I’m sorry, Sue Sylvia was his fiancée at the time,
and Sue was the daughter of my college coach Charles Sylvia.
GN
: Oh, so I see. They were the ones…
LVW
: Dave was the one giving the exhibition.
GN
: As things stand now, how does the swimming operation go? Do you go out and recruit
students to come, or do students come in the door and say “I’d like to be on the swimming
team”?
LVW
: I always believed that to be an honest recruiter, because I believe there are a lot of
coaches that are—in all sports today, that are not truly honest about meeting the needs of the
student athletes. I think some of them sometimes perform like used car salesmen than they do
honest representatives of the institution. So my personal philosophy has always been to recruit
those student athletes that have found Marist college first; what need do they think or believe that
Larry Van Wagner 10
Marist College will meet in their college undergraduate experience. And so those are the
individuals that we go out and make contact with. They’ve made first contact with us, and then
we’ll continue to dialogue from there, until they get to the point where they have narrowed down
their choices of colleges. So today we have a software, a database, because we’re dealing now
with over one hundred student athletes that are in my database for the 2012 class, freshman class
that will come in.
GN
: Is that so?
LVW
: [hum of agreement]
GN
: And…therefore there are cuts. Not everybody makes it who would like to.
LVW
: Yes, because we have, again…it’s interesting, because many people thought at the
opening of the McCann Center that Marist had this Olympic-sized facility, and it’s not even
close, really…pure honesty, it’s not even close to being an Olympic-sized facility. The
competition part of our swimming facility is just a normal, minimal NCAA limited twenty-five
yard, six lane facility, that’s what we have. Which most every college, in college swimming,
especially in Division One, we’re all working in the same minimum facility. The one advantage
that Marist has is the diving well; we have a very nice diving well which is a forty foot by forty
foot diving well, beyond the swimming competition’s area. So that allows our divers to compete,
and basically to practice at the same time that we are swimming competitively, which makes it a
much closer relationship between our swimming and diving contingents. But because of the
facility, to answer your question, we have to limit the size of the roster. So right now I limit it to
twenty swimmers. Twenty male, twenty female, forty swimmers total, because that’s all we can
physically fit into our pool at one time.
GN
: Sidebar. Do you have anything to do with clubs? Swimming and all that?
Larry Van Wagner 11
LVW
: Yes. I’m glad you asked me that. That was basically the first program I started, was the
Marist Swim Club. It’s a USS program, it’s an age group program, so we have them coming in
as young as five, and we have them staying as old as… I’ve had twenty-seven and twenty-eight
year olds! Still competing, even on a national level with a USS Club; United States Swimming is
what USS stands for. So I start at the club, and again, they were part of the opening ceremonies
back in 1977 when we opened the doors to the McCann Center. I had the Marist Swim Club; that
was the first day that they officially started their relationship with Marist College. So we came
in, I conducted a practice during the dedication ceremonies, along with my friend Dave Lang
doing the diving at the other end. And that was the start of the USS program here at the college.
And I started that with the help of Ron [Pietro], and Doctor Linus Foy.
GN
: Is it still operative?
LVW
: Still operating today, thirty-five years later.
GN
: How big a program is it?
LVW
: We, again, manage it in terms of size, so we’ve had approximately seventy-five young
men and women from the Hudson Valley.
GN
: Yeah, I think that was part of the underlying…That we were going to provide an
opportunity for the neighborhood youths.
LVW
: That’s correct, that was the understanding we had with the McCann foundation at the
time, is that we’re going to have the doors open to the community, and in some way service their
needs. And again, being from the community… as a former club swimmer, I knew there was a
tremendous need to have a professionally directed, but also a college controlled age group
swimming program in the Hudson Valley. And that’s another reason why we started the Marist
Swim Club. And thank God we did.
Larry Van Wagner 12
GN
: Yes…There’s a hundred questions going through my mind about it [laughs]. Do you give
scholarships?
LVW
: We do! We didn’t start them until the nineties. So from the late seventies to the early
nineties, we were operating with no athletic scholarship money, which is what—in the NCAA’s
eyes—they would define us as a division three program; even though the college was division
one since 1980. The only sport that competed with the scholarship support was basketball. The
rest of us had no scholarship support until the nineties.
GN
: That’s…That’s one…Another question: How do you go about…or does nature itself, or the
enthusiasm of the participants…How do you get the drive to keep coming to practice? The
water’s all cold sometimes in the morning, or even in the afternoon. But most people, it seems to
me, come to swim, they’re dedicated to it.
LVW
: You have to be. You absolutely have to be, because swimming may be unlike many other
sports. It’s not a team sport, it’s considered an individual sport. Much of the motivation has to
come from within. When you get in the pool and practice, and you submerge your head, below
the surface of the water, there is nobody else there. There’s not a team, really, to support you or
motivate you or to help you establish your personal goals, and motivate you to achieve those
personal goals. That’s why I think swimmers, in particular, are the greatest goal setters and
achievers that we have in college athletics, because they do it themselves.
GN
: It reminds me of cross-country running, or something like that. Just to get out there…
LVW
: Same experience.
GN
: And do it in the cold of the morning.
LVW
: And the other thing too is, because our sport is so aerobically demanding, we have to put
more time in. Which many of the student athletes at Marist are amazed at how much time the
Larry Van Wagner 13
swimmers put in to their preparation. Our kids…we are basically training, or, they are required to
train twenty hours a week. And on top of that, we have, because of the nature of the sport, the
longest collegiate season in college athletics; its twenty-four weeks long, that we’re going twenty
hours of commitment, which is…a pretty large commitment. It’d be no different than having
almost a part time or full time job and still be a student.
GN:
Okay…Do you travel much?
LVW
: We don’t have to travel thankfully, because now that the college decided to go into this—
our most recent athletic conference, the MAAC Conference, we did that in 1995. Swimming
actually was actually the first sport at Marist to go into the MAAC Conference. We were in it for
two years before the rest of the athletic department was allowed to come in, because they still
had prior commitments to the northeast conference at the time. So we were the first sport to
compete in the MAAC and we did so for two years. But thankfully because of that relationship,
we now had a secured and maintained dual meet schedule, as well as a championship meet
schedule. Prior to that, we were in a conference called the Metropolitan Swimming and Diving
Conference, specifically, I think, only to our sport.
GN
: Do you have any problems with attendance, or is that the same question that…the
motivation of the student to come…he’ll come on his own.
LVW:
You know, we set the demands right off the bat during the recruiting process; every
student athlete that is looking at Marist College is told “these are the requirements to be a
member of the men’s or the women’s swimming and diving program.” So they know well ahead
of time, coming in that commitment that’s going to be demanded of them before they even step
foot on the campus. So, no. To answer your question, no, I don’t have any problem with
attendance [laughs].
Larry Van Wagner 14
GN
: They know the name of the game!
LVW
: They do, they do!
GN
: How many coaches do you have?
LVW
: Part time. I’m the only full time person on the aquatic staff. So right now we have
Melanie [Bolstad], who is a diver and a P.E. major at the University of Maryland. Her husband is
Rick [Bolstad], who was an IBM-er, an engineer at IBM, and they relocated to the Hudson
Valley. And Rick was a diver at Syracuse University, so they’re both former athletes, they’re
both competing on a rather grand scale in division one athletics and diving. And they relocated to
Highland, New York, and found out during their transition that there was a pool at Marist
College, so [laughs] they sought out the facility… like “go where the water is!” They sought out
Marist College and got involved in our US diving club. And that was over twenty-two years ago.
It’s ironic that today, their middle son, Brian, just graduated from Marist College as the most
successful diver in the history of our program. It recognizes the male athlete of the year, here at
Marist College.
GN
: That’s…Its funny, I have to ask you these things because I don’t know them off the top of
my head.
LVW
: Of course, of course.
GN
: And when I go through the list about…Who are the people in athletics and what are their
roles, I see some names, and I don’t quite fit in…It doesn’t, you know…Swimming coach or
assistant coach or…There’s a woman, or a second woman, there was a Sullivan here, I don’t
know if she’s still with us…
LVW
: No, she was a former swimmer here at the college, and actually married one of the
assistant athletic directors, who became an athletic director at a private division three school in
Larry Van Wagner 15
Rhode Island. So Stephanie was only with us for one year as an assistant coach. But the other
person I have to mention besides Melanie is Kyle [O’Neal], Kyle’s a local, a resident of
Poughkeepsie, attended Poughkeepsie High School, again, swam for the Marist Swim
Club…Again, see…We get a lot of things out of the Marist Swim Club, not just for the
community, but mostly for Marist College…There are a lot of assets that we’ve been given in
response to the club. Kyle was a member of the Marist Swim Club, he joined us his freshman
year in high school; eventually came to Marist College, represented the Red Foxes for four years
and became a conference champion during his time here; stayed in the area, volunteer coached
the college program for another ten years; and in the last eight years, we’ve been able to pay him
a salary [laughs]. But again, a part-time person in the program, and people like Kyle being here
and being involved with us for fifteen years, and Melanie for twenty-two years now, it’s…
GN
: It’s unique, you know. I have to hear you say this because I don’t know it.
LVW
: Without a doubt, a major asset to our successes over the years.
GB
: Let me ask about that, because…Let’s talk about your successes…I mean, just to be in the
game is sufficient as far as you’re concerned. And so, were there some competitions that you
were particularly successful in, in terms of…There are all kinds of awards and trophies hanging
around the Marist swim pool…What comes to your mind in the category of ‘successful wins’?
LVW
: Well I would say again that our introduction to the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference
was a huge step for us, because we were really the forgotten cousins of athletics here, because
again, we were in a conference that was totally separated and just hatched from the Marist
College athletic conference at the time. So we were competing in a conference that really no one
ever heard of or knew anything about, and because of that, probably most of our successes were
less appreciated. But because of the fact that we’re now competing against the other schools, that
Larry Van Wagner 16
most of our other sports are competing against, and that has an added value, I think. And more so
an input to the success of the entire department now. So since becoming a member of the
Metropolitan Athletic Conference, our men and women have won twenty four conference
championships. Prior to that, they were in the Metropolitan Conference, having won four
conference crowns there. And probably the highlight of the conference level championships
would be the two EC/AC championships that the women’s team has won in the last four years.
And I say that because it’s more of a regional… you know, we can evaluate our successes only
within our conference, the MAAC conference. But now the EC/AC, which, again, is a unique
situation, it’s a regional conference that encompasses every conference from Maine to Virginia;
we’re able to see schools that we’ve never seen before, and compete directly against them. And
again to reevaluate
how do we stand
as a MAAC school against the Big Ten…not the Big Tens
but the Big East, the Ivy League, the Atlantic Ten schools. And the EC/AC championships has
afforded us to do that. So it gives me a greater perspective of our success.
GN
: Now putting that in focus, when you say twenty four, is that one a year for twenty four
years? Or two or three a year?
LVW
: Well you can win two a year because you have a men’s championship and you have a
women’s championship. And for the first ten years the men won every MAAC conference
championship. But in the last fifteen years, they’ve won twelve total. And the women have won
twelve total. It’s amazing how they’re both equal in their terms of their levels of successes.
They’ve both won a dozen MAAC conferences in the last fifteen years.
GN
: To turn the page a little bit…Some disappointments? [pause] You’re very optimistic, but I
was just thinking…
Larry Van Wagner 17
LVW:
I think because the only disappointments are—as a coach, and I like to consider myself a
professional coach, because that is my background, from my education to my experience…Is
that my sole purpose in life, my number one goal is to help every individual try to realize their
potential to the fullest. The problem with that is that you also need a student athlete that has the
same frame of mind, and you don’t always get that on any level of coaching. There are many
student athletes along the road as we take this journey through life that, as I could see, had
tremendous individual potential within them. And because they didn’t have the same dedication
and commitment to the sport, we never realized that; and those are
my
failures. I consider them
my failures as well.
GN
: Well… true. I taught English and poetry, and they talk about a tree… And is it obvious to
you which way
Interview Cuts off at This Point