Gold medalist Tommy Hannan wants to pass on the life lessons he's learned in the pool

An Olympic gold medal - at least one from the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia - is about as big as the palm of a hand and surprisingly heavy. Ask Tommy Hannan, a graduate of the University of Texas and veteran of the university's world-class swim program. He won one.

However, the Olympic experience, great as it was, could've been even better - if Tom Hannan had been just a little bit better prepared, he said. But what happened in Sydney is one of the life lessons he learned from swimming. Hannan, a former coach at the University of Washington, is spending the summer in Brewster coaching the Brewster Bearacudas swim team.

Hannan said he got his start on a community swim team much like the Bearacudas, back in his hometown of Baltimore, Md. It was a huge program, five or six teams in each age division, and kids mostly competed against each other. Swim team lasted six to seven weeks, and "at first that was the only time of year when I swam," he said. In fact, his mom enrolled him in the swim team because she thought he needed something to do for the summer; the Hannan boys, Tommy and his younger brother, were full of energy and their mom wanted to ensure it was properly channeled. "Smart woman," Tommy said.

So Hannan played baseball along with swim team, and basketball and soccer and went skiing. "I had a great group of friends that liked to do the same stuff I did." As he got a little older he concentrated a little more on swimming, joining a team at the local YMCA and swimming three or four days a week for six or seven months of the year. But he didn't focus on swimming to the exclusion of other activities; "I was good in lots of sports. I was just a natural athlete," he said. He was successful enough in the meets he went to, and that was good enough - until his YMCA coach told Hannan that he could do a lot better, that he had the talent and was wasting it. "That came as a shock to me," Hannan said. "Nobody ever talked to me like that before. And it was good."

The coach told Tommy he wasn't the guy to push him to the next level, but he did know a coach that could, Hannan said. His dad knew about his son's tendency to lose focus; his dad is the kind of guy who finishes things, Hannan said, and he wanted a coach who would keep the kid on task. Hannan ended up at the Eagle Swim Team (the same team recommended by his YMCA coach), coached by Scott Ward McDoughan. The new coach said Hannan had talent but little experience; he needed to learn the value of training and patience, understand that sometimes it took a while for hard work to pay off. "He just took me in and mentored me," Hannan said, and showed him what it takes to be a world class swimmer.

Hannan was a high school sophomore, attending a private Catholic school. By the time he was a senior "I'd become a machine," he said. Four mornings per week Hannan would start training at 4:30 a.m., including 90 minutes in the pool, go to school all day, then finish his homework before going back to the pool for another three to four hours. The weekend training schedule was three to four hours Saturday and three hours Sunday.

His teachers didn't know about the long hours in the pool - and if they did know they didn't really care, Hannan said; they expected him to do the same reports and coursework as everybody else. They didn't cut the athletes any slack, and "they shouldn't have cut me slack," Hannan said; the teachers treated the kids like adults, and required them to meet the same expectations as everyone else. The swimming coaches also had expectations and expected the team to meet them. The teachers didn't know about swim team, but both teachers and coaches were teaching the same values, Hannan said.

With all those demands Hannan had to find time to do all the things teens do, and he did, he said. "Swimming taught me how to manage time so well," he said. "I like doing things at the last minute," he said; he's had a lot of practice at it.

McDoughan moved on from Eagle Swim Team, replaced by the coach he had trained to take his place, Sean Huchison. With McDoughan's preparation and Huchinson's coaching, Hannan became a force in the pool. He was one of the team's stars, attracting attention from colleges. So was his buddy Mark Teixiera, now an infielder with the New York Yankees. "We used to sit next to each other in class," Hannan said, and his schedule was as demanding as Tommy's. "He'd go and hit in the batting cage every single day," because that was what it took to reach his goal. The two served as examples and challenges for each other, he said.

Hannan chose the University of Texas, which has one of the most respected swim programs in the world; Texas has produced 65 Olympians under coach Eddie Reese and countless NCAA and U.S. champions. With such a high level of competition, it could be expected that everybody took swimming pretty seriously - well, not so much, Hannan said. "Eddie's not very serious." The coach was "more of a grandfather figure;" Reese is the kind of coach that build an environment "that fuels itself."

Boy howdy. "We were so competitive we would get in fights in the pool." Guys goofed off at their peril. "If somebody felt somebody else wasn't doing something right, they heard about it," Hannan said. The saying was "it must be nice," as in it must be nice to jog to the pool, rather than sprint, when a swimmer was late for practice, or it must be nice to be a little slow coming out of the locker room for practice. "You weren't running, you were going to get taunted." Guys who were too slow were targets for water bottles, Hannan said.

These were some of the best swimmers in the world; "Eddie knew who understood stroke techniques the best," and would encourage the more experienced swimmers to help out the rest. "We were teaching one another."

The challenge of swimming, the urge to improve, spurred him on, he said. "My favorite thing to train" was the breaststroke, "and it was my worst stroke," he said.

Hannan made the U.S. National team during his undergraduate days at Texas and was a fixture on the team through 2003. "That was my goal every summer. Free trips. Get me out of Austin. It's too hot." And he wanted to make the Olympic team.

But there was a lot of swimming before the Olympics, and a lot of intermediate goals in between - which was one of the most important lessons he learned from swimming, he said. "Constant goal setting. Constant reevaluation." He'd reach a goal, see where he'd been and where he had to go, consider his strategies, set new goals. "Little ones all the time. I mean all the time." If a person concentrates only on the ultimate goal they're more likely to fail, to get discouraged by failure or bored in the attempt. Intermediate goals are a way to stay focused, Hannan said. "That's the only way to keep your mind on it all the time."

Unlike some swimmers Hannan didn't have a specialty; "in my college years I swam a little bit of everything." He set some NCAA records and some American records; he thought he could make the Olympic team but he wasn't sure how. He was concentrating on the backstroke.

And then the Texas team got some new, state-of-the-art, full body suits; Hannan missed the meet where the team tested them, and "Eddie wanted me to swim in a kid's event with this suit on." He was entered in the 100-meter butterfly in a regional meet.

It was all set up for a less-than-stellar performance, Hannan said - he wasn't feeling good, it would be a slow field, he was just there to test the suit. And when he touched the wall he discovered he'd turned in one of the fastest times in the world. He remembered his teammates looking at him in shocked surprise, he said, and looking back at them with the same shock. "That's when I realized I had a chance in the 100 (meter) butterfly and decided to swim fly." (At the Olympic trials he made the finals in the 100-meter backstroke also and gave up his spot to a 14-year-old named Aaron Pearsall, who ended up enrolling at Texas and medaled in Athens in 2004.)

He qualified for the Olympic team in the 100-meter butterfly. And that, he said, left him with a dilemma he'd never really thought about before. He'd made the Olympic team, but he'd never really thought about actually competing in the Olympics. "I didn't know what to do - I made the Olympic team."

Hannan had been on the national team, and "they treat you pretty well." But Olympic athletes get the red carpet treatment. The team trained together from the trials through Olympics, which were in late September. From the moment they arrived at the training site in Pasadena, "we were completely spoiled. All this food. All this gear." (It was a far cry from college days, where "I lived on bagels, tuna and grilled chicken," Hannan said.) Every sponsor had stuff for the athletes; they got the best accommodations. The team trained in Brisbane before moving on to Sydney. At every stop "we were living like professional athletes do." It was "overwhelming," Hannan said.

And Hannan never got back into that training routine that got him on the team. "Honestly, I would say it was almost distracting, everything we did." The goal was reached and he lost a little of his focus, and it showed in his Olympic results. He finished 14th in the 100-meter butterfly. He was also part of the U.S. medley relay team, and swam the butterfly leg in a preliminary heat, and won his gold medal there.

But - well, it could've been better. And Hannan said he was disappointed in the outcome at first. Looking back on it, however, Tommy Hannan actually wouldn't change what happened. "Failure is one of the most important factors of success." Over time he's grown to appreciate the opportunity and what he learned from it. "That's the most important thing. That I learned something."

He kept swimming, got a degree in business administration, moved to Seattle to work with his swim team coach. He had a chance to make the 2004 team, but just missed the finals for the 200-meter individual medley. "That was my last race ever."

Then "I had to figure out how to make some money." He worked at the Texas bookstore, put his degree to work as a financial planner ("financial consultant, I guess they called me"). Then a friend was named the head coach at the University of Washington, and he hired Hannan as an assistant coach.

Hannan coached for three seasons at the university, and in that capacity he took a call this spring from a guy in a town he'd never heard of in eastern Washington. Mark Miller is a U-Dub alum, and the last few summers he's hired guys in the swim program; they work in the Miller cherry orchard and help coach the Brewster swim team. Miller first contacted the university just after the Pac-10 meet, while the swimmers were gearing up for the NCAA meet, and his request went on the to-do list. There it stayed while coaches and athletes worked on summer training schedules. Then rumors began circulating that the university was facing severe budget cuts, and the swimming program was on the block.

"Friday, May 1, they cut the program," Hannan said, and he had the summer to think about what he was going to do next. In the meantime there was still Miller's offer. It was a good opportunity to promote swimming, Hannan said, so he called Miller back and said he'd take him up on the coaching job. "I'm for the promotion of swimming," Hannan said; swimming has given him a lot and he's learned a lot.

What happens after the summer is still up in the air. He's taken the tests for MBA programs, and he could work as a graduate assistant in a swim program somewhere. In the meantime he's got a place to stay and study at Alta Lake, and Brewster is kind of an attractive place. "It's a great opportunity. And it's fun."