Sean C. Morgan
The Sweet Home Swim Club welcomed a new coach to town this month.
Jill Black of Brownsville replaces Coach Rene Kirkland, who resigned last summer and moved to California.
Black comes to Sweet Home via a long career in school and a variety of jobs.
She grew up in Vancouver, B.C., where she was among the top five swimmers in Canada. She went to the University of Washington on a swimming scholarship in 1980. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology, the study of human movement, in 1984.
She swam all four years, but “I did awful,” Black said. “I was coming off the 1980 Olympic boycott. It was my dream to make the Olympic team in swimming.”
But Canada joined a boycott protesting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
“That event had a huge effect on me,” Black said.
She just messed around for a few years, doing all kinds of jobs and getting married and divorced. She also worked as a swim coach. She moved to Toronto, Ontario, then on to Eugene after a year.
“I got tired of taking just odd jobs,” Black said. She attended the University of Oregon from 1989 to 1991 graduating with a master’s degree in psychology. She made a few detours then attended Oregon State University, where she pursued a doctorate in psychology. A year later, she decided it wasn’t what she wanted to do and finished a master’s degree in counseling in 1994.
“Then I wanted a real job, like a normal job; so I worked as a counselor,” Black said. She worked for Looking Glass Options Counseling and Center for Family Development in Eugene for six years. She counseled teens and families mostly, usually dealing with teens in trouble with the law.
“I thought I really connected with that group,” Black said. “It was a group I never really got to know as a teen. I was always swimming.”
The last job she had in counseling was at Thurston after the shooting.
“It’s kind of surreal now,” Black said. “I didn’t know why I took the job. It was just something I had to do. I was the main support for students and some parents.That pretty much burned me out on counseling,” mainly because counseling took place at the scene of the crime.
She had enough, “so I went back to school,” Black said. “I went back to OSU, and I finished my Ph.D. in counseling.”
She planned to work in academia and teach counseling.
“I was still on this mission to be normal and stay away from sports,” Black said. She was going to write her dissertation on school violence but ended up writing about the 1980 Olympic boycott.
“I think that helped me realize that working as a coach or working on the pool deck was an okay thing,” Black said, although she had always coached part time.
“I saw it as a negative thing,” Black said. “I had to work out how to motivate kids to achieve a high level and somehow prepare them if a boycott happened.”
In a way, she saw pushing students to reach the top level as a setup, although she has not coached anyone to the Olympic level yet.
Indiana State University hired her as a teacher. Six months ago, she and her husband moved there so she could get it out of her system.
“I hated it,” Black said. “I was really bored. I don’t think I’ve ever met an assistant professor who was really bored.”
They moved back to Oregon.
Her husband, Chris Jameson, is a Volkswagen technician at Sheppard Motors in Eugene.
Black started looking for work and found two open swim coach positions in Oregon, one in Oregon City and one in Sweet Home. Oregon City bumped up an assistant coach.
“The more I thought about trying to make something happen in Sweet Home, it was more interesting,” Black said. It’s a team that’s down to the bare bones. Its oldest veteran is 11 years old.
“One of the reasons I was interested in Sweet Home is because it’s a small town,” Black said. “I think it’s easier to motivate swimmers if there’s only one team in town.”
Eugene has nine swim teams, Black said, so it’s difficult to get the town behind the team.
A small logging town in British Columbia produced one-third of Canada’s top swimmers years ago, Black said. “I saw the parallel with Sweet Home.”
Sweet Home has a good history, Black said. “Give us a year and we’ll be back on that path. It’s hard to have a group go four to five months without a coach, but the kids seem to really respect swimming. I can tell they have a good tradition.”
Despite her misgivings, Black always coached swimming.
She did it for “the kids,” she said. “I get really attached to the kids. They’re funny.
“Being on the pool deck is one of the few places I feel relaxed. I guess I’m just at home in it.
“In swimming, there’s something to do. Even if I was coaching a team of national champions, there would still be things to change. It’s hard to get bored doing their job. I can’t say I’ve ever been bored coaching. There’s so much going on.
“Swimming attracts quite a variety of kids. I also think it attracts some kids that couldnít be in other sports. Itís a great mix.”
Black’s mother was a top swimmer in Canada, although Black didn’t know it. She guesses it’s just in her genes.
“My mom would cart me around to different sports,” Black said. “She was a sports fanatic. She wanted me to find something to do, seriously to do.”
In her family, “you can’t do anything half,” Black said. At age 11, she saw a swim meet. “I said that’s what I want to do.”
By 15, she had made the national cuts, Black said. She was also fortunate to have a great coach in many respects. Her coach was Ron Jacks, brother of Terry Jacks who recorded and made a hit out of “Seasons in the Sun” in the early 1970s. Ron Jacks had been coached by Doc Counsilman, the guru of swim coaching.
“I lucked out and got a good coach,” Black said. “Through that experience, I realized that a coach plays a huge part.
“I have really high standards. One kid used to call me a picky coach.”
Black likes her swimmers to remember details, like keeping fingers together, keeping the head still and think of streamlining. Those details make the difference between successful and unsuccessful swimmers.
“My goal is that kids leave the pool deck feeling good about themselves,” Black said. “If that happens to be world class, that’s great. If that happens to be they make the high school swim team, that’s great.”
She just wants swimmers to meet their potential.
The swim club has 19 athletes now. She would like to build it to more than 75 swimmers and make a living off of it in the end.
After returning to Oregon, while driving down Interstate Five, Black and her husband stopped off in Brownsville to see friends. Those friends invited them to stay with them. They had friends in the neighborhood who were visiting Hawaii. They ended up house sitting, then the house next door opened up for rent, and theyíll be moving in.
“I love it,” Black said. “I’m excited because I have to go the Post Office to get mail.”
Before Brownsville, Eugene was the smallest town Black had lived in.
Black isn’t completely new to Sweet Home. She taught two terms of psychology 101 at the Linn-Benton Community College Sweet Home Center.
“I haven’t really seen much of it,” Black said, but “I like that corner market across from the high school because they used to have these Canadian candy bars.”
Swim practice runs from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday.
For information, persons may ask at the pool or call Black at 409-2364.
The meet schedule is still being developed, but Black anticipates attending one meet per month throughout the year.