Life
goes just swimmingly for this family
By LYNNE BERMEL
You won't find a family as swim
crazy as the Anzais. Heck, it's even hard to get
their dog,
“We've spent most of our lives in
the pool,” says Tom, 46, who, along with wife Marie, 41, run a competitive
age-group and masters swim program in the city. Their four children are all
competitive swimmers at the regional to the national level.
Tom was a junior national finalist
in the butterfly, and broke provincial records as a master's swimmer. Marie was
a national junior-level synchro swimmer and
represented
“Meeting Marie was serendipitous,”
says Tom. “We got to know each other swimming on the varsity swim team, but
ironically, we swam together as age-group swimmers in the
Tom's dad coached the Peterborough
swim club, while Marie's father was the coach for the west-end junior team.
It was only natural that Tom and
Marie's children -- Trevor, Kenton, Emily and Andrea -- have followed in their
footsteps. Trevor, the oldest, has recently become a certified coach for the
family-run SwimOttawa program.
Tom remembers Sunday nights as a
kid watching swimming videos with Doc Councilman, considered one of the
greatest coaches of all-time. Councilman taught Tom that oxygen was overrated
and the way to get to the top was to live by the mantra: “Hurt, pain and then
agony.”
But it was his coach at
“She taught me how to make
practices fun for kids.”
“Each person is unique in the way that he or she moves
through the water. We believe one of the most important things to teach our
kids is to love the water and to work with it, rather than fight it.”
