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Tuesday, April 26, 2011
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Issue 67 I N D E P E N D E N T
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Coaching giant remembered as true volunteer Assistant swimming, diving coach Joe Hendee dies year after brain cancer diagnosis Zac Ellis Editor-in-Chief
• Photo courtesy of UT Athletics
Assistant swim coach Joe Hendee celebrates during a meet on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2009. Hendee, who died Sunday, was an assistant with the swimming and diving program for more than 30 years.
Joe Hendee never viewed Tennessee as a stepping-stone job. The UT assistant swimming and diving coach knew what he loved, and what he loved was the Vols. “That’s just who he was,” Geoffrey Sanders, a senior on the swimming and diving team, said. “He was a Volunteer through and through. He lived and died with the Vols.” When Hendee, an assistant in the UT swimming and diving program since 1978, died Sunday at 50 after a year-long battle with brain cancer, the university lost a coach who represented Tennessee for more than 30 years on the pool deck. “You just can’t even put it into words,” Sanders said. “He was the glue that held our program together.” Hendee’s effect on the program helped propel the Vols into national prominence. After starting out as a student assistant in 1978, Hendee was hired in 1983 as the university’s first full-time paid assistant coach under legendary swim coach Ray Bussard. During Hendee’s tenure, Tennessee amassed a 177-32 (.847) dual-meet record. The Chattanooga native helped the Vols churn out three SEC championships and one national championship. Hendee also oversaw the training of 92 individual SEC champions, 15 NCAA champions and more than 100 All-America selections. Hendee was also irreplaceable within the Knoxville swimming community, serving as the head coach of the Knoxville Racquet Club in the summer for 20 seasons. It was that attitude of generosity
that stuck with UT swimmers who were touched by Hendee’s caring demeanor. “Anything and everything that you needed done with Tennessee swimming or anything that you ever needed to talk about,” Sanders said, “Joe was always there.” Sanders, who was recruited by Hendee out of Enloe High School in Raleigh, N.C., said Hendee’s genuine personality stuck out when compared to other college coaches. “A lot of swim coaches, they try to be used car salesmen,” Sanders said. “One of the things that really stuck with me about Joe and the University of Tennessee was that Joe wasn’t trying to sell athletic accomplishment. “He would say you could be an All-American, you could be an Olympian, but at the same time, it was much more than that. It was a lot more of coming to the University of Tennessee and becoming a true volunteer in every sense of the word and really honoring what it means to wear the orange and white.” Sanders still remembers the first time he met Hendee. The UT coach was making rounds at a junior national swim meet in California when Sanders noticed Hendee’s attire: A large bucket hat, complete with Hendee’s initials, and bright orange tennis shoes. “He came up to me and said, ‘Hey, my name’s Joe Hendee,’” Sanders said, “and the first thing I said to him was, ‘... from the University of Tennessee?’ “You could tell from the shoes, there was no question.” Hendee took a leave of absence from UT in August 2010 after becoming diagnosed with cancer earlier that summer. Those remaining within the program, however,
made sure Hendee’s years of service were not forgotten. The swimming and diving program organized a team to participate in UT’s chapter of Relay For Life on April 15. Every member of the program took part in the event, which raised $8,686 — the largest fundraising effort by one team at this year’s Relay event. The inspiration behind the group’s effort was obvious. “Joe always said, ‘Fight the good fight. Finish the race. Keep the faith,’” Coleman Weibley, the UT swimming and diving program’s operations intern, said before the group’s Relay appearance. “We just want to stand behind Joe and fight cancer along with him. “He has always been willing to drop everything to help someone, so now it’s our turn.” The dedication Hendee showed in his tenure at UT was mirrored in his work ethic. With no collegiate swimming experience beneath his belt, Hendee made the most of a passion for swimming by starting out as a student assistant upon graduation from UT. But Sanders said Hendee was a true “student of the sport.” “Every chance he had to talk to someone about how they’d trained a certain person or what stroke technique was, he’d do it,” Sanders said. “You’d go into his office, and he’d have books all over the place about swimming.” Much of Hendee’s knowledge came from well-known experts of the craft. “I remember he had emails from Bob Bowman, who was Michael Phelps’ coach, about how he trained Phelps,” Sanders said. “He never settled. He was always striving to get better.”
Taliban arranges Afghan prison break Associated Press While ground fighting eased during the long Afghan winter, insurgents in the former Taliban headquarters of Kandahar were apparently busy underground. The Taliban say they spent more than five months building a 1,050-foot tunnel to the main prison in southern Afghanistan, bypassing government checkpoints, watch towers and concrete barriers topped with razor wire. The diggers finally poked through Sunday and spent the night ferrying away more than 480 inmates through that same tunnel without a shot being fired, according to Afghan officials and the Taliban. Most of the prisoners were Taliban militants. The extraordinary prison break, following a recent wave of assassinations here, underscores the weakness of the Afghan government in the south despite an influx of international troops, funding and advisers. It also highlights the spirit and resourcefulness of the Taliban despite months of battlefield setbacks. Officials at Sarposa prison in Kandahar city, the one-time Taliban capital, say they discovered the breach at about 4 a.m. Monday, a halfhour after the Taliban say they had gotten all the prisoners safely to a house at the other end of the tunnel. Government officials corroborated parts of the Taliban account. They confirmed the tunnel was dug from a house within shooting distance of the prison and that the inmates had somehow gotten out of their locked cells and disappeared into the night. Kandahar remains relatively warm even during winter and the ground would not have frozen while insurgents were digging the tunnel. Police showed reporters the roughly hewn hole that was punched through the cement floor of the prison cell. The opening was about 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter, and the tunnel dropped straight down for about 5 feet (1.5 meters) and then turned in the direction of the house where it originated. But access was denied to the tunnel itself, and it was unclear how the Taliban were able to move so many men out of the prison so quickly. Also unclear was why guards would not have heard the diggers punch through the cement floor, and whether they supervise the inside of the perimeters at night. A man who claimed he helped organize those inside the prison told The Associated Press in a phone call that he and his accomplices obtained copies of the keys for the cells ahead of time from “friends.” He did not say who those friends were, but his comments suggested possible collusion by guards. “There were four or five of us who knew that our friends were digging a tunnel from the outside,” said Mohammad Abdullah, who said he
had been in Sarposa prison for two years after being captured in nearby Zhari district with a stockpile of weapons. “Some of our friends helped us by providing copies of the keys. When the time came at night, we managed to open the doors for friends who were in other rooms.” He said the diggers broke through Sunday morning and that the inmates in the cell covered the hole with a prayer rug until the middle of the night, when they started quietly opening the doors of cells and ushering prisoners in small groups into the tunnel. He said they woke the inmates up four or five at a time to sneak them out quietly. They also didn’t want too many people crawling through the narrow and damp tunnel at one time because of worries that they would run out of oxygen, Abdullah said. The AP reached Abdullah on a phone number supplied by a Taliban spokesman. His account could not immediately be verified. The Taliban statement said it took 4 1/4 hours for all the prisoners to clear the tunnel, with the final inmates emerging into the house at 3:30 a.m. They then used a number of vehicles to shuttle the escaped convicts to secure locations. Reporters were not allowed into that building, but officials pointed out the mud-walled compound with a brown gate and shops on either side. The city’s police mounted a massive search operation for the escaped convicts. They shot and killed two inmates who tried to evade capture and re-arrested another 26, said Tooryalai Wesa, the provincial governor. But there was no ignoring that the Taliban had pulled off a daring success under the noses of Afghan and NATO officials. “This is a blow,” presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said. “A prison break of this magnitude of course points to a vulnerability.” At least 486 inmates escaped from Sarposa, most of them Taliban fighters, according to Gov. Wesa. The Taliban said they had freed more than 500 of their fellow insurgents and that about 100 of them were commanders — four of them former provincial chiefs. Government officials declined to provide details on any of the escaped inmates or say whether any were considered high-level commanders. The highest-profile Taliban inmates would likely not be held at Sarposa. The U.S. keeps detainees it considers a threat at a facility outside of Bagram Air Base in eastern Afghanistan. Other key Taliban prisoners are held by the Afghan government in a high-security wing of the main prison in Kabul. Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said the military command in Afghanistan had “not Tara Sripunvoraskul • The Daily Beacon been asked by the Afghans to provide any assistance” such as intelligence help in looking for Lillian Schaeffer, sophomore in studio art, plays with her friend’s dog, Wilow, in the the escaped inmates. grass outside the Humanities Building on Monday.