ATHLETICS
SWIMMING
Gary Leach: ‘Awesome Big Yelling Machine’ The MAC swim coach retires Aug. 31 after 17 years at the club and 44 years coaching in the Portland area
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ost folks have a favorite day of the year. Christmas. Their birthday. First day of summer vacation. But not Gary Leach. His favorite is Hell Day. “And that’s the most fun,” says Leach, referring to the one day a year his Pre-Seniors squad of swimmers stroke for 25,000 yards over three practice sessions. A MAC swim coach since September 1999, Leach retires at the end of August after a 44-year career, leaving in his wake teary-eyed swimmers, parents and his fellow coaches. Aug. 31 may well mark their Hell Day. “Gary is not just my colleague, over the course of years he became my friend,” said Alex Nikitin, MAC’s head swimming coach. Nikitin adds: “Gary’s daughter-in-law, Julie, was one of my first swimmers I coached here. He and I ran five marathons together, we coached on deck back-to-back for over 5,500 days, the list goes on and on.” “I began swim team at MAC at age 5, and was in one of Gary’s first groups here,” says Kori Carpenter, now 22, whom Leach coached for a decade. The regional champion swimmer for Whitworth University says, “During those years he used his talent to turn me from a drowning 5-year-old into one of the top swimmers in the Pacific Northwest,” as well as an academic powerhouse.
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Carpenter adds, “He made sure that we prioritized school and family, and always celebrated when we had good grades.” [Leach treats his straight-A swimmers to a breakfast in the winter and a dinner in the spring.] Deborah Conchuratt’s son Sam – today 25 and a former Xavier University swimmer – says he “attributes Gary’s inspired coaching to all that he was able to achieve,” such as becoming one of MAC’s few Scholastic All America Team swimmers. A decorated competitive swimmer himself, Leach was named to the All-America Team during each of his four years at Central Washington University, qualified for the 1972 Olympic swim trials, and even competed against nine-time Olympic champion Mark Spitz. Leach says he’ll never forget the 1971 Santa Clara International Swimming & Diving Meet. “I was ahead of Mark Spitz,” Leach recalls of his 100-meter freestyle heat. “I got on the block ahead of him. After that it was all downhill.” After earning his bachelor’s degree in three disciplines – physical education and geography, with a minor in English – Leach returned to the Portland area in 1972 to launch his career, first at the Forest Grove and Tualatin Hills swim clubs, then at MAC, where he joined Nikitin. Under the influence of his four-decade vocation are swimmers and their families who respect Leach for his own love of swimming, as well as a tough work ethic paired with making the sport fun, and his