Scott Swanson
Doug Peargin’s name will be forever linked to Sweet Home swimming – and for good reason: He’s coached the Huskies for 46 years and under his leadership they’ve done very, very well.
Husky swimmers have won seven state team championships and 24 state trophies under Peargin since their first one in 1987, and they’ve posted the most wins of any sport at Sweet Home High School. Sweet Home definitely has a prominent spot on the Oregon swimming map.
But Sweet Home’s success in the pool didn’t start with Peargin’s arrival in 1974. It’s true that the Huskies had few individual state champions in the early years, but in those days all the high schools in Oregon with swimming programs – large or small – competed against each other in one state meet.
The Huskies produced some outstanding swimmers before their names began appearing regularly in the lists of state titlists.
Competitive swimming in Sweet Home started soon after the community opened its swimming pool in June of 1952. The 33 1/3-yard outdoor pool was built with money raised by the Frontier Days festival, the forerunner of today’s Sportsman’s Holiday.
By 1953 the Sweet Home was holding “intra-city swim meets” on Saturday mornings, complete with trophies, and was establishing a “Dolphins swimming team.”
In the summer of 1954, the recreation swimming team was going strong, doing nightly workouts at 6 p.m. From that group, 13 swimmers were selected for the state recreation meet in The Dalles, which included both AAU-sanctioned and non-sanctioned competitions. They brought back five ribbons.
Their best hope of a top finish ended in an “unfortunate accident in the finals,” according to an Aug. 5, 1954 report in The New Era, costing Sweet Home “a possible first in the girls 50-meter backstroke race.”
“Naomi Austin, who had paced the field with the fastest time in Saturday morning’s 50-meter backstroke qualifications, became entangled in the ropes during afternoon finals.”
Sweet Home’s was the smallest team in the competition, The New Era noted.
The program continued to develop, and in 1958 Keith Marshall Sr., who was athletic director at the time and who had a background in track, decided to start a high school swim program, which included a youth program.
Christy Hartman-Decourcey, one of Sweet Home’s top all-time swimmers, said Marshall learned to coach swimming by reading books about the sport. It worked.
An Aug. 25, 1958 report in The New Era notes that Sweet Home youth swimmers “wiped the only blemish from their record at the local pool Saturday when they gained revenge on Springfield to the tune of a 202 to 157 score.”
The swimming program was “strong” when she was growing up in Sweet Home, recalled Hartman-Decourcey, who was Sweet Home’s first-ever All-American as a high school freshman, in 1970, though she never won a state title in high school, despite having one of the 10 fastest high school times in the nation in the breaststroke.
Marshall’s children, Keith Jr., Julie and Tony were keys to the early success, she said.
“Julie Marshall, his daughter, taught me to swim,” said Hartman-Decourcey, who with her husband now owns a horse ranch and runs a real estate brokerage in Bend, after completing a career as one of the first female Oregon State Police officers in the state.
She’s also won numerous gold medals in national and international swimming events as a master’s swimmer since finishing her college career at then- Southern Oregon State College. In 1998 in the Pacific Asian Games in Australia, she won the 50-, 100-and 200-meter breaststroke events at age 45.
Hartman-Decourcey drew attention early, she said, including personal coaching from the senior Marshall.
“I remember him taking me all over the state, everywhere,” she said. “I was 5 or 6 years old. It was very serious then, in the 1960s. Our football, basketball, wrestling teams were very good. We had a lot of money then because Sweet Home had the timber industry, taxes.”
Her cousin Evan Layton, seven years her senior, was also an excellent swimmer who went on to swim in college, she said, and Tony Marshall was Sweet Home’s first swimming state champion.
The Huskies had had one other individual state titlist prior to Peargin’s arrival: Wayne Hyde, who won a state championship as a freshman in diving in 1961 – after stepping in for Jerry Bagley (“who was a great diver,” Hartman-Decourcey recalled). Bagley had been the No. 1 diver until he broke his knee when he hit a diving board. (High school diving was discontinued in Oregon in 1997 due to safety concerns.)
Hartman said her success as a swimmer was the reason the Sweet Home pool was shortened, from 33 1/3 yards to the current regulation 25 yards in length.
“They changed it because of me. I’m not bragging,” said Hartman, whose father Calvin Hartman was a school board member at the time. “I was already an All-American at 15 years old. But I couldn’t set a record in my own pool. They decided, ‘We’ve got to do something.'”
The pool, which had been enclosed since it was built, was shortened to 25 yards and the excess was converted to what is now the warm-up pool, separated by a new deck.
The community was “very supportive” then, she said.
“The Elks Lodge bought all of our swim suits. We had beautiful purple and white sweats. They paid for so many things.”
She noted that Alan Cardwell was another top swimmer of that era. Cardwell went on to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, where he was inducted into the Nanook Hall of Fame in 2011 after accumulating nine individual and five team All-American honors in three years as a college swimmer before the men’s program was cut at the school.
In the early 1980s, Cardwell served as the chairman of Oregon Swimming, and in the summer of 1995 he set a world record in the 800 meter freestyle for the 40-44 year old age group with a time of 9:17.93.
Peargin arrived in Sweet Home from Tracy High School in the East Bay area of California.
A 1960 graduate of Sanger High School in the rural San Joaquin Valley south of Fresno, he’d played football and wrestled and swam in high school before deciding to focus on swimming at Fresno City College, where he was named an All-American in the 100 Butterfly in 1962, and at Fresno State, where he was a scholarship swimmer. He was eighth at the U.S. National Championships in 1965, which also served as the Olympic trials, clocking a lifetime best of 50.6 in the 100-yard Butterfly.
While coaching at Tracy High School, in the East Bay area of Northern California, where he’d founded the swimming program, he met Felix Wilkerson, who later moved to Sweet Home to coach basketball. Peargin liked the area, and when an opening for an aquatics director became available at Sweet Home, he took the job, which included coaching the Husky swimmers.
Swimming was at a low ebb when Peargin arrived, he said.
“The program was small, numbers-wise, when I came in,” Peargin said. “It was more just a high school sport. They were a few kids who swam during the summer, but it was more of a recreation-type program.
He said many students seemed unaware of the swimming program, though interest started rising after the district started requiring students to take two weeks of swimming lessons.
“You know, you could evaluate kids like that and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got some ability. We’d love to have you this summer,'” Peargin recalled, noting that he got the summer program fired up soon after arriving.
Peargin considered the age group program vital to establishing a competitive high school team, he said.
“If you don’t have a powerful feeder program, your high school is dead – in any sport.
“If you come in as a freshman and you’re a pretty good athlete, and there’s a guy who started when he was 8 years old swimming against you with that same God-given ability, he’s going to whip your tail. Right? Especially in swimming.”
Bruce Davis, one of the top swimmers in Sweet Home history, whose two daughters also had accomplished careers in the Huskies’ pool, agrees on the importance of year-round training.
“The club is definitely the feeder program for the high school,” said Davis, who’s served as both coach and president of the Sweet Home Swim Club over the years. “With all the technique, everything kids need to learn, it’s true.”
Peargin said one of his goals was to get youngsters into swimming before they reached high school, so they could develop basic skills and “get the technique down before they even get here.”
It worked. His summer program grew from 30 participants to 130.
“It was dirt cheap for parents – $10 a month,” Peargin said. “They gladly shipped their kids down here for 10 bucks and got rid of them for a couple of hours. It got to be a powerhouse, that age group program.”
Athletes started getting interested, he said.
“Before, they’d go out for football, baseball, basketball – something they’d seen, you know,” Peargin said. “Swimming was an indoor sport.
“It ended up working out pretty good because we had a lot of good athletes. If you’ve got good athletes, who are dedicated and believe in your program, you can be flat tough.”
They were.
The Husky boys won their first state trophy ever in 1987, Davis’ junior year, placing third in the team competition – against the entire state. Eleven years later, in 1999, they placed third again, then won their first-ever team title in 2000.
The boys won again in 2009, 2010 and 2017 – when they made history by doubling with the girls.
The girls’ first state team championship came in 2016, after trophying for the first time with a fourth- place finish in 2011. They titled again in 2017 and 2019.
The Huskies have won either a boys or girls team trophy (top four) – or both – every year since 2007, with the exception of 2013.
They’ve won the district title, on either the boys or girls side – or both, every year since 1979.
The list of individual state champions through 2020 is long (see below).
Some two dozen Huskies have moved on to swim at the college level, including some who share last names – extending into the second generation (see below).
Some have gone to even greater heights. Sweet Home has had four Olympic Trials qualifiers: Bruce Davis, Leah Land, Jayce Calhoon and Lucie Davis.
The late 1980s were a golden period for the Huskies, individually. Following Hartman, who qualified in 1970 in the 100 Breaststroke as a freshman, Leah Land (1987-89) and Bruce Davis (1987-88) were both three-time All-Americans. Davis qualified twice in the 100 Breaststroke (58.62 and 57.84) and in the 200 Individual Medley (1:54.12). Land’s All-American times were all in the 200 IM (1987 – 2:05.67, 1988 – 2:06.77, 1989 – 2:05.76).
Jayce Calhoon gained All-American status in 2009 in the 100 Backstroke (52.22) and Megan Hager did it last spring in the 200 Freestyle, swimming 1:50.29.
Peargin said he never got a chance to coach Hartman, but he knew her as an “impressive” swimmer.
“Christy was here before I got here and all I could hear was good things about Christy,” he said.
Hartman went on to swim at Western Oregon, then transferred to what is now Southern Oregon University.
Land, Peargin said, was another great one.
“Leah, physically, was a smaller individual with horrendously hard work ethics. I’ll tell you what’s scary about this: Leah Land was an All-American in the 200-yard Individual Medley three different years and right now Lauren Yon was faster than her and (current Husky) Josie Hewitt is almost as fast right now,” he said, noting how high school times have dropped.
Pete Porter, then sports editor of The New Era, noted that Land held “every single” individual school swimming record on the school records board posted at the swimming pool when she graduated in 1989.
“Without a doubt, Land … is the most outstanding female swimmer ever to perform at SHHS,” Porter wrote that year.
Peargin notes he’s had a lot of other swimmers who could have gone on as well to the next level. And he’s had plenty of others who, although they weren’t college prospects, were just as important to his team, because that’s the core of the Huskies’ program: depth.
“I’ve had a lot of great people in this swimming program that weren’t great swimmers. But I love to have them on the team. There’s the attitude and the work ethic.”
He recalls one who, he said in typical Peargin fashion, “had anchors on,” but helped the Huskies place second in state in a relay race.
“He could walk into a room and he had the presence of a 35-year-old. He made everybody around him better.”
It hasn’t all been roses, for sure.
There have been plenty of inconveniences – most recently, of course, the COVID shutdowns that have left swimmers who are used to training year-round high and dry for most of a year.
Peargin recalls the time in 1987 when the drainage system for the pool backed up, thanks to debris that had accumulated from years of swimmers losing hair pins and other small items that eventually jammed the sand filters on the old boilers.
The resulting flooding “ruined anything on the deck,” he remembered. “It happened on a Friday. We came back Monday. And if you didn’t have hip boots on, you were wading around on the deck in the water. You come in to swim, you know, you don’t have to get in the pool. You could on the deck.
“It was bad.”
Then there was the toll taken by Peargin’s demanding schedule, which, he noted, caused his first marriage to fail “because I was never home.”
He was running the aquatics program, coaching club and high school swimmers, coaching water polo.
“I’d get down here at 6 in the morning and go all the way through the high school and finish at 5:30, then I’d pick up at 5:30 and finish at 9. Yeah, right. I had 130-some age-groupers.
“And you know why did I get divorced, for sure? Well, I didn’t know I was married.”
All coaches say they do it for the kids. And they mean it.
But Peargin has spent most of his life on the deck at the Sweet Home Community Pool.
So what makes Sweet Home swimming so successful, particularly in recent years?
Bruce Davis says it starts with that youth program, which feeds talented, experienced swimmers into the high school.
“We’ve been blessed with a lot of really good coaches that have worked really well with young kids,” he said, noting that more talented youngsters are in the pipeline, breaking records set by those whose names are listed above.
He said a key element of Sweet Home swimming is the “family culture” of the program, noting that most people have no idea what a typical competitive swimming practice entails.
“Growing up, some of those people are absolutely my best friends,” Davis said. “I think that’s always continued. It’s such an individual sport – you spend a lot of time staring at the bottom of the pool. That interaction is important.”
He cited his own daughters, Lucie and Mia, also accomplished swimmers, who both attended East Linn Christian Academy, where their mother Jen – who swam collegiately at Kansas – teaches.
“My kids didn’t go to Sweet Home schools, but they were always accepted on the team. They knew most of the kids by the time they got to high school. Those of them on the team who weren’t (year-round) swimmers figured out pretty quick who they were. Again, that kind of goes back to that family mentality.”
Peargin said his goal is to run a program that gives kids “something to be proud of.”
“Instead of just saying, ‘Hey, I went to high school and I went out for swimming,’ it would be a sport that they’d say, ‘Hey, you know, I went out for a sport that I never worked so hard in my life. But I gained so much out of it, not only in athletic ability but in life – how to win.’ Give them a basis.
“A lot of them come from a home where there’s no goals. They just get up in the morning and get in bed at night. They respond to a structure. It’s something they can carry on with them in life.
“They learn a lot of things that are important: how to compete, how to win, how to stand up and take a loss and be able to keep your mouth shut about it and work harder so it turns out better next time.
“You know, ‘You never get beat twice the same way,’ my coach used to tell me. Everybody’s going to get beat. You never let them beat you the same way.”
Most of all, though, it’s those life lessons that are important, he said.
“You’d be surprised, those kids who’ve never had structure,” Peargin said. “They take that bit in their mouth and kind of fight you on it. Then, as soon as they find that structure works, they’re more dedicated to it than kids who’ve had it all their lives. They really like it.”
A big challenge, Davis said, is keeping the doors open at the pool. School district officials have relied on three tax levies since 2012 to fund the pool program, the most recent to expire in 2023. Then the coronavirus has shut down the pool for most of the last year – to everybody, including competitive swimmers.
“I think Sweet Home residents, in general, have the challenge of keeping the pool open,” Davis said. “COVID obviously has brought on a whole new challenge. It’s been like that for everybody.
“I know, for a fact, that we have some really good swimmers coming up. If they can stay in the water and keep training, the future is really bright for Sweet Home. It’s a big deal.”