Swimmer, 80, makes big splash nationally | CourierPostOnline.com

by Julia Hays on August 25th, 2009 Comment

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Swimmer, 80, makes big splash nationally

By CHUCK GORMLEY
Courier-Post Staff

If word spreads quickly enough about her exploits in the 2009 Summer National Senior Games, Cherry Hill's Marianna Hagan might become the next television spokesperson for Cash For Gold.

Two months shy of her 81st birthday, Hagan enjoyed a Phelpsian performance in Palo Alto, Calif., earlier this month when she won six swimming gold medals. For good measure, on her way back from the West Coast, Hagan stopped in Indianapolis and grabbed two more gold medals and a pair of silvers at the U.S. Masters Swimming Long Course Championships.

"Why do people climb Mount Everest?" Hagan asked. "Because it's there. I like a challenge. Life is a challenge, and so is swimming."

During her four days of Senior Games competition, from Aug. 1 to 4 at Stanford University, Hagan placed first in the 80- to 85-year-old category in the 50-meter butterfly (1:01.05); 100-meter butterfly (3:01.86); 100-meter backstroke (2:07.87); 100-meter individual medley (2:10.59); 200-meter backstroke (4:32.79) and 200-meter individual medley (5:15.46).

Not bad for a Latvian immigrant who underwent heart-bypass surgery in 1994.

Born in 1928 in Switzerland, Hagan and her family returned to Latvia when she was 5 and eventually settled in Germany, where she first learned to swim at 14.

"If I didn't learn to swim, I could not move on to the next grade," said Hagan, an aquatics director at the Katz Jewish Community Center on Kresson Road. "They tied me to a rope and taught me breast stroke."

Thanks to a $1,000 sponsorship her aunt paid the U.S. government, Hagan moved to the U.S. at age 21 and attended the University of Missouri and Columbia University in New York before getting married and settling in Cherry Hill in 1960.

After her children joined the Jersey Wahoos swim team, Hagan began competing in masters swimming in 1979. Since then, she has competed in all but one Senior National Games, which take place every two years and routinely draw more than 10,000 athletes age 50 and older.

"I have no idea how many gold medals I have," said the mother of four and grandmother of nine, "but they keep getting bigger."

David Gladfelter of Moorestown was also in Palo Alto for his eighth Senior Games. He competed in six swimming events and placed as high as fourth in the 70-74 age category.

"We do it to stay healthy and fit," said Gladfelter, a 73-year-old semiretired lawyer. "To race each other for trinkets is like being a kid again. We really do it for the fun."

Gladfelter, who trains at the Burlington County YMCA and at Burlington County College, said he and his wife often plan their summer vacations around his participation in the Senior Games, going to Mexico City when the Games were in San Antonio, Williamsburg when they were in Newport News, Va., Disney World when they were in Orlando, Fla., and the Grand Canyon when they were in Tucson, Ariz.

Hagan used her trip to Palo Alto to visit her daughter Alice Bradbury, who now lives in Colorado, and she met with another daughter, Linda Dusold, when she arrived in Indianapolis.

Gladfelter said he plans to join hundreds of local athletes in the 2009 New Jersey Senior Olympics, which will be Sept. 11-13 in Woodbridge.

Hagan said she may pass on the state Games because she wants to conserve her energy for the next national qualifying event, sometime in 2010.

Reach Chuck Gormley at cgormley@courierpostonline.com.