Hill Pool

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Looks like a pool that belongs to a competitive swim team, doesn't it?



You almost never see the water so still that you can read the record board in the reflection.

This pool is in heavy use nearly all the time. Pioneer is home to very successful swim teams, water polo teams, and synchronized swim team.

How successful?

You don't get better than this.



Pioneer is a public high school. It is not officially an athletic magnet, much less a swim magnet, and it is in Michigan, not Florida or California. (They haven't had a chance to put the banner up, yet, but the girls won again, a couple of weeks ago. Nine in a row.........)

The little flags you see below denote national records currently held.......





What has Pioneer got that makes up for its frostbelt location?

Denny and Liz Hill.

Denny has been swim coach at Pioneer since 1968. He coached Liz, who then swam for the University of Michigan, taught elsewhere, and later returned to be assistant coach at Pioneer. Denny and Liz married, and the partnership continued to coach swimming at Pioneer.

Pioneer's record speaks for itself. Ninety percent of all dual meets won. Thirty state championships, between the girls and the boys. Three national championships for the girls, in '03, '05, and '06.



I am the parent of a Pioneer swimmer who had never swum competitively before high school. She decided to swim because her schedule was very full. Swim team was after school, and replaced an otherwise-required term of gym, leaving time in the school day for academics or music.

As total outsiders to the swim community, we had no clue that this was one of the very best teams in the country. All we knew was that everyone who would do the work was welcome.



I wondered, that first season as Pioneer steamrolled every opponent, why we weren't swimming against anyone hard..... Wouldn't we regret that, when we went to the state meet?

Then I found a list of the top ten teams of the previous year.

Half of those teams we had steamrolled were on the list. And not the bottom half, either.

Oh.

Hmmmm............



It was definitely not your ordinary swim team.

Not every swim team comes in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 11th, and 13th in one event at the state meet (200 IM in 2002). Not every swim team sets four national records at a state meet (2002). Not every swim team sends two Olympians to one Games (Beijing in 2008). Not every swim team is the best in the country. Ever. Let alone three times in five years (two of those times without our 2004/2008 Olympian!).

What an astonishing thing to get to be part of. !!!



What about my kid? The Pioneer swim team, as coached by the Hills, is one team. Not varsity/jv; *one* team. Every one of the 80-plus (!!!) girls on the team competes in every home meet.

Every swimmer is valued for her contribution to the whole.

My kid discovered she loved being on the team. She loved cheering for her teammates, and, yes, she loved that she went faster and faster. She was never going to be a star on this team, but she set goals, and achieved them through years of constant effort. How many 14-year-olds work hard for two years to achieve a goal like getting to swim at the state meet?

How excellent for kids to learn, as they never will from parental admonishment, that hard work -- even boring repetitious hard work -- can get you where you want to go!

From a very casual beginning, swim became a big part of our lives. My daughter's high school friends were swimmers, and her college friends and roommates are swimmers. Her choice of colleges was made partly because she would be able to swim for her university. We traveled to meets then, and we travel to meets now (a lot farther from home!).

The Pioneer swim program includes everyone willing to do the (enormous! amount of) work, from the fastest swimmers in the country to those whose swim goals are just as difficult to achieve but will never make the record board.

Here is one of my favorite stories about Pioneer swim.

One day, during my daughter's first-ever swim season, two pool records were broken.

During that same meet, one of the seniors broke her own personal best in the 500 freestyle, coming in in under ten minutes (the pool record in that event was/is about 5 minutes).

There was more cheering from the Hills, from the team, from the fans, for the broken ten-minute-mark than for the pool records. The other swimmers in the race waited in the pool for her to finish, and they all got out together.

That day, for me, is the essence of Pioneer swim as coached by the Hills.



On Saturday, November 29, the pool at Pioneer was officially named the Hill Pool, in honor of the enormous impact they have had on generations of swimmers.

Here is an Ann Arbor News article.

Go Pioneer! Swim like Hill!!!!



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