IS SCHOLLANDER A SWIMMER?
The photograph on the facing page was conceived by Don Schollander, who is best known for winning four gold medals in swimming in the 1964 Olympics. He is in the foreground, faintly angelic and, as was his intention, "somewhat pensive"; below him is the Kiphuth Exhibition Pool at Yale, where he is a senior majoring in economics. Schollander hoped that the photograph might be, as it were, a true exordium to the story—one of his courses this semester is History of American Oratory. For example, in this regard he feels that the illustrations in a 1966 cover story on him in G Q Campus & Career Annual were not particularly relevant. "They had a real fetish about me standing behind gates," he says.
He is, however, pleased by his photograph (below, right) in the current issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine. This is a mild put-on of the hallowed Yale fence picture (above, right); since 1876 captains of Yale teams have had their pictures taken while perched in identical, solemn poses atop a section of fence that bordered the Old Campus. These portraits are shot in a disused bowling alley, against a rather ineptly executed backdrop of the Old Campus in its heyday. Schollander, who is captain of the swimming team, didn't show up when the 1967-68 fence pictures were taken; that night he went to see a film of Yale's 56-15 win over Dartmouth in football last year. This doesn't signify any lack of reverence for Yale or its institutions; Schollander would call it a value judgment.
In the Yale Alumni Magazine, Schollander is portrayed in his bathing suit, but without the traditional letter sweater, standing broodingly before the fence. The photograph reveals, in addition, two waste cans, a drinking fountain and a light cord.
"I want to get a little highlight off that golden hair," said Joel Katz, the photographer, when he was setting up the picture. "Wah! Grandeur!"
"This idea really appeals to me," said Schollander. "To show what the Yale fence scene really is."
The first glimmering of our picture came to Schollander one recent evening when he opened, as he says, "a door I didn't know was there." Once on the other side, he found himself high above the Ex' Pool. "It was fairly dark," he recalls. "The overhead lights were off, but the underwater lights were on, and the pool looked so far away. What stood out were the small red exit lights. It gave me a cool feeling."
Schollander believes that the scene symbolizes his life at this moment. First, he points out the great distance between himself and the pool. Although Schollander is the premier swimmer of the decade, he says, "I don't call myself a swimmer at all. I'm a person who happens to swim." Moreover, he doesn't care to estimate just how important swimming is to him. "It would look silly in quotes," he says. " 'Swimming is¼2nd of my life.' I don't sit around and talk about swimmers. I don't room with swimmers. I don't keep a workout diary or read swimming magazines. I wouldn't write out my splits." When Schollander was 15, George Haines, the coach of the Santa Clara (Calif.) Swim Club, wanted him to keep an aqualog. "On each page there were little words of inspiration and what not," Schollander recalls. "I told George I didn't want to live swimming 24 hours a day." Not long ago Haines, who still coaches Schollander during the summer, advised him to take this semester off to prepare for the Olympics, in which he is expected to win at least three gold medals—in the 200-meter freestyle and the 4 x 100 and 4 x 200 freestyle relays. He declined.
Schollander doesn't want to be regarded as a student-athlete, either. "I don't let studies or swimming interfere with my dates or having fun," he says. "Why should they? If I want to go out on Friday night, I go out on Friday night. I feel some people make themselves into special people. I'm thinking of a certain person who attended another Ivy League school. He gave the impression that he was strictly a student-athlete. That was his value standard. I'm not going to judge it, but I've thought about how I want to live my life and I have come up with a different plan. For instance, I think I'm more socially oriented than most of the people you see around Yale. By nature I'm sort of a social animal."
On the wall of the barroom in the warren of rooms Schollander shares with 11 fellow seniors in Yale's Berkeley College there is a plaque upon which is written: Purple Heart Concession. It is further inscribed with the signatures of all the roommates and the motto Rutus Audiorium—dog Latin for "Stick it in your ear." "It all has to do with the number of dates you've had," Schollander explains. "Or, rather, valiant efforts." There are gold stars alongside two of the signatures—those of Schollander and his closest friend, Duke Savage.
When Schollander speaks of "fun" he means, among other things, walking in the woods or simply sitting on a beach. "But with a date," he says. "Not six guys tramping through the forest. I have a somewhat romantic side, but it's not that big." Schollander drinks sparingly and has never smoked or tried drugs. "Some people think I'm square," he says. "That's just too bad. You can't spend all your time worrying what people think of you. I have been assigned a public image. It is the golden, average, ail-American boy who is polite to reporters and fairly humble. You can't walk up to people and say, 'Hey, you don't know me.' "
In our photograph Schollander is deliberately seated by himself in the gallery. By this pose, his solitude, mood, the rather melancholy prospect, he intends to convey that he is greatly given to reflection. "I'm very introspective," he says. "I think that's true of all college kids today. We're a very pampered generation. When we grew up everything was given to us. We've been afforded the luxury of being introspective. We aren't as impressed with 'making it.' I'm certainly not a spokesman for my generation, but what's going on with today's youth is the concept of helping others—humanitarianism. We're worried about idealism, more lofty things.
"For example, I'm quite interested in doing extremely well financially in a relatively short time. I'm not money-hungry, but what I want to do is become financially secure so I can become more fully motivated to higher things in life—social good, humanitarian values. It is possible to help yourself and society at the same time. For example, there may be a way of building really low-cost housing in ghettos, improving conditions, helping people and, at the same time, helping yourself. I want to become a true entrepreneur—but as a humanitarian, not a philanthropist. Unfortunately, I'm not that altruistic."
A couple of years ago Schollander was greatly distressed by a story on him which appeared in The New York Times. In it he was quoted as saying, "The main thing I want out of life is to be happy." "Isn't that asinine?" Schollander said the other day while having coffee in Berkeley College's great dining hall. "It's really naive. Of course, the most important thing in life is happiness, but in the Aristotelian sense—living the 'good life,' providing for yourself, your family, doing some humanitarian good."
Farther on in the Times piece Schollander said that if he had pursued an early interest in medicine he wouldn't have been able to start his career until his 30s. He is then quoted: "Gone would have been the best years of my life."
"Isn't that a terrible sentence?" Schollander said. " 'Gone. Would. Have. Been. The. Best. Years. Of. My. Life.' It's ridiculous. There's no such thing as 'best years.' The best years may be when you're a little boy playing cowboy.
"What about the future?" he went on. "This is the crux. Before you decide how you want to live your life, you must look at yourself and attempt to know yourself. I look at myself as a person who's trying to develop as an individual. It's been important to me throughout my life to be much more than a student, to be much more than an athlete, to be much more than anything. This is consistent with my philosophy of the well-rounded, but not necessarily Renaissance, man. I'm proficient in the academic side, the athletic side and the social side. I'm not proficient in the arts—music, painting, sculpture. Unfortunately, I don't have time to go to more plays, take in concerts. I'm always on the go. I think I have a very active mind. I don't feel I do total justice to anything."
Besides being captain of the swimming team, Schollander is one of two senior student directors of the Yale Co-op (until his recent resignation, the other was Casey Murrow, son of the late Edward R. Murrow); a member of the Aurelian Society, which he describes as "an honor society for the 20 most outstanding seniors—supposedly"; a member of Skull and Bones, the secret society; and a member of DKE, of which he was formerly secretary-treasurer.
"The person who is just an athlete or just a student has a very hollow life," Schollander said. "After college what has he to turn to? Next year swimming won't even be in my life. There is much more to life than swimming. There are greater challenges in life than swimming presents."
Which brings up yet another aspect of the photograph on page 24. Schollander believes that it delineates a boy (or man) nearing the end of a certain way of life. "I'm sort of on the downhill slide," he says. "I'm approaching the end of a career. I am sitting up here in the dark above the pool, reviewing my life in swimming, like an old man in his last days might reflect on a life which is ending. Next year, when I'm no longer swimming, I know I will come back and look at this pool. In Tokyo, after the Olympics, I went back to the empty pool by myself and looked at it."
Schollander made his name in swimming in 1962, when he was 16, equaling the world record in the 200-meter freestyle (a record, which, over the years, he has improved a dozen times) and setting a U.S. record in the 440-yard free; in addition, he finished first in the 200 and second in the 400-meter free in the AAU national outdoor championships and came in third in both the 220-yard and 1,500-meter free at the indoor nationals.
These early performances illustrate the unique aspects of his career. Most notably, six years later, Schollander still holds the world record in the 200, having bettered it by 1.5 seconds in 1967. Nowadays competitive swimmers flourish little longer than mayflies, and Schollander's reign in this and, indeed, in other events is unrivaled. So is his success at such disparate distances as 200 (and, from 1964 on, 100) and 1,500 meters. This is on the order of Jim Ryun winning the 100-yard dash as well as the mile. Schollander's somewhat poorer performances indoors are not a reflection of his ability but, for the most part, a consequence of his size. He is 5'11", while the majority of swimmers, particularly sprinters, are well over six feet, so they are farther out at the start and on the turns, and, in effect, they swim less yardage; this is of particular advantage indoors where competition is held in a 25-yard rather than a 50-meter pool. As Phil Moriarty, the Yale coach, says, "Given two Schollanders, Rig Don is going to beat Little Don every time."
In 1963 Schollander won both the 200 and 400 in the outdoor nationals and was second in the 400 at the Pan American Games. In 1964 he held U.S. records in the 200-yard, 200-meter, 400-meter and 500-yard free and a U. S. citizen's record in the 800-meter free, was first in the 100, 200 and 400 in the outdoor nationals, establishing a world record in the 200, and, of course, in the Olympics was the first since Jesse Owens to win four gold medals, taking the 100 and 400 and being a member of the winning 4 x 100 and 4 x 200 freestyle relay teams. For these feats he was voted the World's Best Athlete of 1964, got the Sullivan Award and the Grand Award of Sports and was named Athlete of the Year by the AP. The last gave him especial pleasure, since he beat out such pros as Johnny Unitas and Dean Chance.
In 1965, despite having been laid up with mononucleosis, Schollander won the 200 at the indoor nationals. In 1966 he won the 100, 200 and 400 at the outdoor nationals, breaking his world record in the 400 for the third time. Last year he won the 200 at the Pan American Games and the 100 and 200 at both the outdoor nationals and the Little Olympics in Mexico City.
Schollander, who classifies himself as "a list maker," gives four reasons for his conspicuous success in swimming: 1) mental attitude, 2) competitiveness, 3) technique and 4) tactical sense. He has already described No. 1. In regard to No. 2 he says, "I'm extremely competitive, particularly in the world of sport. If you see a paradox, it's not there. I'm competitive within a small framework, in that while I'm in the race I try as hard as I possibly can, but I won't train eight hours a day and I'm not on the block saying, 'I've got to win, I've got to win, I've got to win.' " Adds Phil Moriarty, whom Schollander calls "the conceptualization" of an Ivy League coach: "He's a natural winner. He doesn't like to lose a conversation." Schollander's technique is nearly flawless: stroke, start and turns. "People say I have 'the most efficient stroke,' " he says, " 'the best-looking stroke,' 'the most classical stroke.' I wasn't trying for beauty. It just came out that way." Says Moriarty, who has been head coach at Yale since 1959 and before that assisted the renowned Bob Kiphuth for 27 years, "His stroke is flawless. Every other swimmer I've worked with had a flaw. With legs only, he does as well as anyone, and he has combined this so well with his stroke that he is a one-motored man. Many swimmers are two-motored, in that they don't synchronize their stroke and kick. As a coach, all I can do is observe him and tell him when he's going off pattern, keep him busy, give him a program. With Don Schollander I feel like I'm training a racehorse. How can I communicate with a horse? How can I tell Don Schollander to get ready for a race? He won four gold medals!"
Finally, Schollander says, "I have a very good tactical sense. There is a great deal of strategy in swimming that no one is aware of, particularly from the 200 on up. You have to make out a race plan, try to figure what your opponents are going to do, what you want to do—go out way ahead, stay with them, move in the middle or blast at the end."
It is, in effect, an axiom of swimming that you don't pace a 100; Schollander does. "I don't have the natural speed," he says. "Going into the Olympics I had the fifth best time, but I won. Last year, in the outdoor nationals, I had the third fastest time, but I won and the world record holder came in fourth. I have the middle-distance temperament. I'm more relaxed. As a breed, sprinters are nervous and jumpy."
His main competitor in the 100 (and the 200) at the Little Olympics was Leonid Ilyichev of Russia. The Russians had been at Mexico City for five weeks and had been in training all summer; Schollander had worked out for only four weeks. "In the heats and semis I did very fast times during the second half of my race," he says. "This was intentional. What I hoped was that if in the final I went out fast, I'd be so close to them I'd psych them out. It worked very well. I was fourth at the turn but right with them. The boys on either side of me were affected.
"My next event was the 200. I didn't know any way I could win that thing. I couldn't go out fast because of the altitude. I couldn't come back fast because I was in no condition. The Russian's strategy was to take it out fast, but the altitude killed him. At the 100 he was only a body length ahead. He had made a tactical error, and I beat him on the third turn."
Schollander is a master at psyching his opponents. Of course, his very presence on the block has an unnerving effect. Furthermore, he may make little remarks which are calculated, as he says, "to be somewhat upsetting to an opponent. Some are naive like, 'I feel great. Boy, I'm going to have a good time.' Some are more sophisticated, like, 'God, I was watching your start. It's really interesting. I noticed that you start kicking before you get in the water. Doesn't it slow you down?' "
With each passing year Schollander finds it increasingly difficult to psych himself up, particularly for practice, although he has never been known to bag, or loaf through, a workout. "I was tempted to quit swimming after 1964," he recalls. "The chances were extremely great I would never be as good. 'Why not quit?' I asked myself, 'Go out in style?' " He didn't, because, as he says, "I enjoy swimming. Moreover, you don't retire from something at 18. Many swimmers do quit young. Physically they become tired. Swimming is very demanding physically. And they may become tired psychologically.
"Last year, in the outdoor nationals, I came in fifth in the 400. Schollander's Career Turns Corner, said the newspapers. 'So what?' I said. I wasn't very discouraged. I try to win, but what the hell. I've won so many times. I've proved to the world and myself that I'm good. You can't lose with a philosophy like that. The stupid reporters thought I'd be crushed. The next day I broke the world record for the 200. It was a great delight. See, sportswriters, this is for you.
"But to take time out for the 1968 Olympics, this bothers me. What I'm trying to do, I guess, is to remain in the top stratum of a sport such as swimming for a period of more than a few years, because no American swimmer has done it in modern times. I enjoy doing things people don't think I can do, proving them wrong. I like the individual challenge. I like everything to depend upon me. In high school I was an All-America in water polo, but it's a team sport. I'd get two strokes on a man and wouldn't get the pass.
"Of course, I don't necessarily have to remain at the top. Whether I am the best swimmer isn't that important, but I really would be crushed if I didn't make the Olympic team. Oh, boy, would I! However, nobody's within two seconds of me in the 200. That's my baby. Inwardly I feel I own it. I've gone 1:55.7, the second best is 1:57.6, something like that. I don't even know. For me, times in swimming are irrelevant, records are irrelevant. I'm not one of those guys who look back at their age-group records and say, 'Gee, no one's ever beaten my 14-year-old record.' I held the 400-meter world record for three years: 4:11 something—I don't even know. The world record I don't even know—4:07, 4:08 or something. Of course, I realize that if I am going to stay on top, I can't be preoccupied with times, for psychologically your frame of reference can be set. My goal may be two minutes. Some youngster's goal may be 1:57. He doesn't know any better. He's not afraid to go fast. My feeling about times is to some extent a defense mechanism. But I know I'm definitely faster than I used to be. I know I'm stronger. The repeat times I've been doing in workouts are the best of my life. I'm improving, but the question is, am I improving as fast as the others are?
"Once you get on top, there is terrific pressure to stay there. I'm not so much swimming to win now but not to lose. I can't win. If I do, they say, 'Well, that's expected.' If I lose, they say, 'Well, after all, he's had his years at the top and it's time for him to lose.' It's human nature to root for the underdog; a recent example, the Boston Red Sox. The poor guys on the St. Louis team couldn't win for much the same reason. With the exception of those from St. Louis, I think I was the only one at Yale rooting for the Cards. I empathized with them."
Donald Arthur Schollander, named after an uncle killed in the Battle of the Bulge, was born prematurely in Charlotte, N.C. on April 30, 1946. After the Olympics, when he became celebrated, Dr. Wallace Bradford, who delivered him, wrote his parents, "I have known Don longer than anyone else in the world." Schollander was supposed to be a girl. In fact, as his mother, the former Marthadent Perry, relates, "Everybody would come up to his carriage, see his blond curly hair and say, 'What a pretty little girl!' Don will hate me for this."
Schollander is pronounced show-lander and is Swedish for beautiful country. The name was chosen by Don's great-grandfather, Alfred Schollander, who died a few years ago at the age of 107. He was born a Johansson, but when he went to college in Stockholm there were so many Johanssons.... Don is amused by the notion of multitudes of Swedes, real Schollanders, erroneously basking in reflected glory.
Don Schollander's family is thick with ex-athletes. Uncle Newton Perry, now a school principal in Ocala, Fla., was an All-Southern tackle at Ocala High, Southern diving champion at the University of Florida, where he was captain of the swimming team for three years, and a state wrestling champion; he was also picked by Grantland Rice as "the All-American swimmer." Don's father, Wendell L. Schollander, who is agency supervisor of production for northern Florida for the St. Paul Insurance Companies, was an All-America halfback at Fargo (N. Dak.) High and an honorable mention All-America at North Dakota State. Wendell L. Schollander Jr., Don's brother, who is getting his master's from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania, was an all-state football player at Lake Oswego (Ore.) High and got his letter in wrestling at Penn.
Marthadent comes from Adel, Ga., which her husband terms the Sour Pickle Capital of the Southeast, and is a cum laude graduate of Florida State College for Women, where she belonged to the first synchronized swim club in the U.S. In Silver Springs, near Ocala, where a number of movie swimming scenes were once shot, she doubled for Maureen O'Sullivan in three or four Tarzan films. "Maureen never even came to Silver Springs, let alone went into the water," says Marthadent.
If Don Schollander is asked where he comes from he replies that he is not from anyplace. When he was a year old, his family moved to Wichita, Kans.; when he was 5 they went to San Francisco, then Berkeley, Calif. for two years; he lived in Lake Oswego from the time he was 7 until he was 15, when he went alone to Santa Clara to be coached by George Haines; his mother and father now reside in Jacksonville, Fla. Don was recently selected by the local Jaycees as the Outstanding Young Man of the Year in Jacksonville. "I wonder exactly what my qualifications are?" he says. "I've only been in the state—what, two days?"
The most consequential of his moves was, of course, to Santa Clara. At the time he was very fond of football, but his father pointed out that he had "a competitive advantage in swimming." "I think many swimmers are lost because their parents push them too hard," he says. "I think mine were just the right blend. They didn't have to push me—I was already interested. Maybe other people felt they were too interested, but I never had that feeling. At the Olympics it was reported that I locked myself in my room and cried when I wasn't put in the medley relay and didn't get a fifth gold medal. This is absolutely untrue. The report made me out to be like a spoiled baby with a stage mother, which wasn't the case at all. It was all blown out of proportion. My mother and father were more disappointed than I was, but that's natural for parents."
Since Schollander has been at Yale the swimming team has not lost a dual meet: they have lost only 15 in the last 50 years. "It's sort of a patsy league," Schollander said the other day. "The dual meets are of no consequence. I don't even know who we're swimming next Wednesday or whether it's away or at home. I should know. I'm the captain."
Schollander's chief contribution as captain has been to revamp the workouts, principally by instituting circle training: instead of swimmers going off in successive waves, the whole team is in the water at the same time, swimming in ellipses within the lane markers. Nonetheless, Yale's daily workouts consist of merely 4,500 yards, compared, say, to USC's 8,000. This is because Yale practices for only an hour and a half a day, while USC, Indiana and Stanford, its main rivals in the NCAA championships being contested at Dartmouth this week, spend from 2½ to four hours a day in the water. "If you're really interested in swimming," says Schollander, "Yale is not the place for you."
In his capacity as captain, Schollander occasionally addresses the swimming team. "It's not too important what you say," he explains, "but just to be talking in terms of a goal serves the purpose of recharging them." Yale's goal this year is winning the NCAAs but its chances are slight since it will probably be shut out in the dives, where Indiana may get as many as 80 points.
Schollander will graduate in June 1969; he didn't enter Yale until January 1965, on account of the Tokyo Olympics, and he will be taking next semester off because of the Mexico City Olympics. If he isn't drafted (he may be 4F since he has had atopic eczema since he was 2), he hopes to become "financially secure" in either finance, banking, investment banking or the brokerage business. "I think that regardless of what swimming has done for me, I'll make it on my own," he says. "I don't try to trade on my name; I don't hide it either. But within two years the name wears off, and if you're handling money for a client he doesn't give a damn who you are. Of course, I'm sure the door will be opened for me."
During his first two years at Yale Schollander had a C+ to B- average; since then his grades have improved, and last semester he got an Honors, three High Passes and a Pass under the new Yale system of grading—equivalent to a B+ average. In addition to History of American Oratory, this semester he is taking Theory of Income Determination and Monetary and Fiscal Policy, American Economic History and seminars in Human Nature and Culture and in Fiscal and Monetary Policy.
Appropriately enough, Schollander's bedroom in Berkeley College overlooks Wall Street, and it is remarkably neat. "All his life Don has been a very neat boy," says Marthadent. "He always has bought all his clothes, and everything matches. If he weren't an outstanding athlete, you might think he was a sissy. The hangers in his closet all have to be the same way and spaced equally. He hangs up his clothes carefully. The socks are separated and even his underwear is folded. I pity the girl he marries."
"I don't fold my underwear," says Schollander, "but I do pity the girl I'll marry."
The most noteworthy objet in Schollander's room is a small refrigerator door. Next to the handle, from which Schollander's umbrella hangs, is the legend: To Detonate Grasp and Pull. The door is further decorated with a painting of a military man and the inscription: Comdr. Pierre Natchez-Halle says, "In The Land Of Punt, The Word Work Is Worth Little."
The door once belonged to the Punt Club, as the former occupants of the suite of rooms two flights above Schollander's called themselves. "People regard us as a Junior Punt Club," says Schollander, "but we're a much more serious group." Indeed, six of Schollander's roommates are going to medical school next year, two to Harvard and one to Yale, and two have been accepted at law school, one at Harvard.
Among the wall decorations in Schollander's room are three psychedelic posters; a painting, which presumably depicts the New York skyline and which Schollander describes as "a Macy's $15 special"; and what he calls, "two sort of neat pictures from magazines." One is reddish and depicts the moon or sun riding in clouds; the other is an aerial view of New York. "I'm really fascinated by New York," he says. "It would be sort of a cool place to start out, even if it wasn't the financial center."
There is, besides, a note pinned to his door reminding him to take his wheat-germ oil, and a clipping attached to his lamp shade, which he says was put up by one of his dates. It reads: Unfit For Reproduction.
One afternoon earlier in March, Duke Savage, Schollander's best friend, was in the Blue Room, typing an English paper. The Blue Room is one of the two living rooms in the suite; it is adorned with what appear to be Beardsley drawings, but are in fact copies done by Bob Anderson, one of Schollander's roommates; two stone lions, which, Schollander says, came from Vassar and are "being borrowed, sort of"; and a mounted buffalo head. "It has no significance," he says. "We bought it for $5 or $10. It came with a speaker we wanted."
"I'm amazed at the way Scholls has adjusted," Savage said. "He's had to come down and get along with people who haven't won four gold medals. He really tries to be a normal person, to get back into the masses, and he succeeds at it. He tries to stay on top as a man, not as a swimmer. He was a legend before he got here. I'm sure there were people waiting to see whether he could do the work. He was an exceptional athlete, but there were people here who were just as good at other things. Bob [Anderson] is a great painter. Greg [Gallico, another roommate] is a great biochemist. They're all damn good men. Scholls respects Bob as much for his painting as Bob respects him for his swimming. Scholls thinks it's really cool that so many of his roommates are exceptional in one way or another."
"It's really been good for him to live in a group like this," said Anderson, who had come in with another of the roommates, Bob Reisner. "It's given him a chance to be closely associated with people of his choice. It's given him a sense of permanence."
"I've never seen him swim," said Reisner. "It might be important to him."
"At a Smith mixer a girl asked him if he played any sports," Savage said. " 'Yeah, I swim,' he said."
"I could tell you my theory on getting to know people," said Andy Garling, also a roommate, joining the group. "We have a human quantum of energy for making interpersonal relationships. A lot of people can set up a schema for meeting people, but he deciphers meaningless people from meaningful people. He has a facility to get into the meat of people quickly."
"True, but how did I fail with you?" said Schollander, entering.
"He asked to come along when I was doing a study on the hippies in New York..." Garling said.
"The hippies are extremely interesting," Schollander said. "They're really a good influence on our culture; the hippies on one side have a gravitational force. If you try to understand them, you get a better perspective on life."
"It was the first time I noticed his incisive remarks," Garling continued, "the ease with which he picks out people. He has a formidable amount of accuracy. I bought a stock and he bought shorts on it. The stock went down."
"But did it ever," said Schollander.
"It got to be a fairly embittered point," said Garling.
"Scholls knows himself pretty well," Savage said. "I don't think there's a whole lot to say about him. He is always happy and I think he's one of the most interesting people I know, even though he's a stupid jock."
"Remember, I typed up what all you guys are supposed to say about me," said Schollander.
Kennedy Helm, yet another roommate, wandered in. "The first time I met him," he said, "he'd been washing some socks in a tub and the water had overflowed and was running down the hall. He reacted so much like any other guy. I felt he was really trying to be a freshman at Yale. He's really good at separating his worlds. He doesn't bring swimming up unless you ask him, and obviously he enjoys talking about it. All those awards he gets. He doesn't come in and announce them."
"I think of him more for his economics," said Bob Reisner.
"Last year, when we were taking an introductory econ course, he explained things to us," Helm said. "That makes him a magician."
"We never wake Scholls up," said Anderson. "And if we think of it, we're quiet for someone taking organic chemistry."
Said Schollander, "Lots of times, if there's a phone call for me, they're too lazy to wake me up."
On a recent Saturday, Yale was swimming Dartmouth at Hanover, and Schollander was entered in the 1,000 and the 500. Before the 1,000, which was his first event, he was sitting on the balcony overlooking the pool, reading a story in The New York Times about the F-111, the Rauschenberg painting. He had also brought along Galbraith's The New Industrial State and a booklet from Goldman, Sachs. There was an overflow crowd for the meet, obviously there to see Schollander. He was asked whether he would try to do a good time for the spectators. "I don't have any responsibility to an audience," he said. "I don't believe any amateur athlete has. We are here to perform for our pleasure."
He won the 1,000 by 3½ laps in a so-so 10:07.36; nonetheless, it was a new Dartmouth pool record and a Yale varsity record, as well, and he was given a prolonged ovation.
"It's the first 1,000 I've ever done," he said minutes later, returning to the balcony. "I didn't know the pace. I swam the first 100 in 55, which is way too fast. The last 200 yards I was really hurting. The last 100 I was cramped up. About lap 28 I was thinking, 'Never again.' It's just too far for me. I was too tired to even swim it off. I'm so tired now that if I went a fast 500 I'd get sick on the bus ride home. I think I'll bathe the 500."
He sat on the edge of the balcony to watch Steve Job and Robin Waples of Yale swim the 50 against Brad Lindeblad, the Dartmouth captain. Lindeblad won, and Job and Waples seemed disconsolate.
"That's really unfair to Job and Waples," Schollander said. "Lindeblad's a great swimmer, but he probably rested all week and peaked for this meet, while we didn't. It's really unfair to.... In fact, I think I'll go talk to them."
When Schollander came back from consoling his teammates he spoke of the imminent 500. "I may not be able to take that baby so easy," he said. "They've got a good man. I may have to go! I'd love to swim against Lindeblad. That 50 thing bothers me."
Schollander won the 500 by more than half a lap. He was asked whether he was concerned by the fact that the Dartmouth swimmer had held the lead for a number of laps. "I bagged it," Schollander said. "He wasn't even in the race."
Schollander got up to go down to the pool deck to watch the final event, the 4 x 100 freestyle relay. "We'll talk Monday," he told the members of the team sprawled on the balcony. "Words! Words!" they chanted.
When the meet was over, Schollander said, "Let's give them a yell, you guys." Allen Richardson, a breaststroker who is called Abu, said, "Why don't we go up there for the yell?" He was referring to the balcony. "Because I'm down here," said Schollander.
Somewhat later Schollander was walking alongside The Green on his way to get something to eat. It was below freezing and there was quite a bit of snow on the ground. "I hope it's like this during the NC two A's," he said. "The guys from the West Coast won't believe it." Snow, too, was being blown about a great ice and snow statue, 35 feet high, representing a prospector, which had been left over from the Winter Carnival. The whirling snow reminded Schollander of the winter when he was 15, at Santa Clara, en route to practice at 6:30 a.m., his bacon and eggs in a thermos.
"The pool was outdoors and lit," he said, "and from far off you could see the steam two stories high. It was like never-never land. Heaven. You were at one end, the coach at the other. The only way he knew you existed was every 30 seconds you should be coming back."
Almost anyone else would have described the scene as resembling hell, Dante's baleful Gulf of Malebolge. But, as Duke Savage said, Scholls is, exceptionally, a happy man.
PHOTO
TWO PHOTOS
PUT-ON of hallowed Yale fence picture, for which team captains have somberly posed since 1876 (above, Doug Kennedy, last year's swimming captain), involves a mock-serious Schollander.
PHOTO
SCHOLLANDER USES KICKBOARD AT YALE
PHOTO
ROOMMATES HELM (LEFT) AND SAVAGE PLAY PRO FOOTBALL GAME WITH SCHOLLANDER