By Lee Davis
Jack Barnacastle coached future Olympian Billy Forrester and several future college All-Americans in his days as a swim coach.
He coached many more future husbands, fathers, wives and mothers.
They were all special to him.
For four decades, Barnacastle was one of the top swim coaches in the Birmingham area, but with his modest nature, he won’t talk much about it.
“I’ll always believe that Jack never got the recognition of other coaches because he wouldn’t toot his own horn,” Mike Curington, who swam for Barnacastle before earning All-American honors at the University of Alabama in the mid-1970s, said. “He just wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted to draw a lot of attention to himself.”
With Barnacastle, his swimmers always came before any self-promotion. An all-star swimmer at Shades Valley High School and Florida State University, Barnacastle helped found the Birmingham Swim League soon after graduating from college in 1965.
“Things were a lot different than they are now,” Barnacastle said. “The high schools didn’t have any real swim programs, and you had only a handful of local summer leagues.”
So Barnacastle and others worked to develop a winter program as well, which meant finding an accessible indoor pool. The BSL found a home at the YMCA and YWCA branches in Birmingham before eventually moving to the pool at the then-new Homewood High School for the winter months and Wald Park in Vestavia Hills for the summer.
“We were moving everything to the south of town,” Barnacastle remembered. “But we still kept the name ‘Birmingham’ for the league. When we traveled out of state for meets, we wanted everyone to know we were from Birmingham, Alabama.”
Barnacastle’s coaching was interrupted by a stint of military duty during the Vietnam War. After he returned, Barnacastle went back to coaching and also got a job teaching biology at Homewood.
His long work hours and dedication to coaching amazed even his greatest admirers.
Stan Farrell, a Vestavia Hills businessman who swam under Barnacastle’s training for years, thought his coach almost never left the Homewood campus.
“On Monday through Fridays, we would meet at the school pool for practice around 5:15 a.m.,” Farrell said. “Then after practice, Jack would go into school and teach biology all day. After school, he was right back at the pool coaching kids until well into the evening. I always wondered when he ever went home.”
Barnacastle said that being involved in competitive swim – either as a coach or a swimmer – requires a special commitment.
“If you are going to be a swimmer, you’re going to have to coordinate with your school, family and social life, and it isn’t easy,” he said. “It’s definitely not for everyone.”
Curington said that, while Barnacastle was tough and demanding, he also knew the limits.
“I think one of Jack’s best assets was that he was flexible,” he explained. “He realized you could only push people so far. Jack had the ability to adapt with the times and to the needs of the individual.”
The coach rarely showed emotion during practices or meets, but Curington remembers one example of drawing Barnacastle’s wrath.
“We were swimming at Wald Park, and I was wearing goggles because most public pools had a lot of chlorine,” Curington said. “And bear in mind, this was in the 1970s, when most swim goggles were made of glass. He got upset with me about something and shattered my goggles. I don’t think he ever did anything like that again.
“I was pretty mad at him for smashing my goggles,” Curington added, laughing.
Barnacastle was always coming up with new ways to help his swimmers, according to Curington.
“Swim training is a 12-month-a-year process, but during that time you stay out of the pool for about six weeks,” he explained. “Jack came up with some great dry land exercises that really helped keep me in shape when we weren’t in the pool.”
Barnacastle retired from coaching in 2001. He was a special guest at a party celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham Swim League June 6.
“We just wanted to do something to show Jack and the other coaches how much we appreciated what they did for us,” Farrell said.
Barnacastle was appreciative of the party, but he characteristically deflected the credit for the BSL’s success in other directions.
“There were plenty of other coaches, parents and others who worked so hard to make this work,” he said. “I was just a small part of it.”
Jack Barnacastle may not like to toot his horn, but his legions of former swimmers are happy to do it for him.
