By Liz Rosenthal on SwimSwam
While championship season grips the nation and the world, big stories are still unfolding on small pool decks. Summer league is where many young swimmers first fall in love with the sport. It’s full of fun, friendship and fast swimming. But there’s something else that makes summer swimming special: tradition.
Traditions are handed down. Records become family lore. Children race in the same lanes their parents once did.
Early Saturdays, hand-painted tattoos and ribbons in the mail keep families and communities coming back year after year, generation after generation. For Callie LoPresti, that tradition is personal. She spent 14 summers swimming for the Boulder Country Club Wahoos. Now she spends them watching her own children race for the same team.
At Boulder Country Club, tradition came full circle this summer when eight-year-old Campbell LoPresti broke a 33-year-old league record in the boys 8 & under 25-yard freestyle. He set the mark July 25 at the Boulder Valley Summer Swim League Championships in Thornton, Colorado.
It didn’t happen on his first attempt.
In the championship final of the 25 free, Campbell touched first, but a malfunction in the electronic timing system meant there was no official time recorded for the race. He knew he had won, but he didn’t know how fast he had gone.
Two hours later, he got another chance.
Before the 8 & under 100 freestyle relay, Campbell’s coach cleared a record attempt with the meet officials. Three additional timers were assigned to his lane for the relay’s lead-off leg.
This time, the result was clear.
Campbell went 14.41, lowering the league’s 33-year-old record of 14.57.
Their coach, former Florida Gator Jessica Thielmann, had seen the record coming. She knew Campbell had the speed. Now he needed the right race.
“He had a goal and he worked towards it,” Thielmann said. “The record being broken was a pure result of the work throughout the summer and last year’s summer.”
Remembering Marshall
The record Campbell was chasing had belonged to another Boulder Country Club swimmer, Marshall Burrow, since 1993. Burrow went 14.57 at the league championships that summer, and the mark outlasted every generation of Wahoos that followed.
Callie LoPresti remembers her former teammate as a swimmer who was impossible not to notice.
“Marshall was fast. Really fast. He was a beautiful swimmer even at a young age, a powerhouse in the water and the kind of swimmer who was simply fun to watch,” she said.
“But it was what happened outside the pool that made him so memorable. Marshall was kind, modest and tremendously hardworking, with a contagious smile and dimples that seemed to be on display as often as his championship ribbons.” He helped lead the Boulder Country Club boys’ medley and freestyle relays to championship titles and records, yet he was just as likely to be found hanging out in another team’s tent between races, chatting with swimmers he had just competed against. “He was the kind of teammate everyone wanted beside them,” LoPresti said.
Burrow passed away four years ago at age 37. His record, however, remained on the BCC record board for 33 summers, keeping his name part of the story for generations of Wahoos. For LoPresti, watching her son break her former teammate’s record carried a significance beyond the record book.
“If that record was ever going to be broken, I can’t imagine a way that honors more what it meant,” she said. “It never left the Boulder Country Club family.”
Brother Barron
Campbell wasn’t the only LoPresti making news in that final. His little brother, Barron, age 6, was right behind him, touching second in 15.63.
Coach Jess sees something special in Barron, too.
“Barron is one of the most gifted athletes I’ve been around, and I’ve thought so since he was four. He hears a correction and executes it immediately, which you can’t teach, and his competitive drive is off the charts,” she said.
The brothers seem to bring out the best in each other.
Campbell likes racing Barron “because he pushes me to do better.” Barron likes racing Campbell “because he makes me stronger.” And after the race, the brothers shook hands.
“I felt really good that our family got the record,” Barron said.
Campbell was glad to have his teammates by his side. “Happy I got to do it with my teammates,” he said.
Winning Relay
Their mother says the family motto is simple: work hard, be kind and be humble. On the summer league pool deck, the brothers seem to be putting those words into practice.
For generations, the Boulder Valley Summer Swim League has served as a launching pad for talented swimmers. Among its alumni are former USA National Team member and Georgia Bulldog Eva Merrell and three-time NCAA Division III national champion Tanner Filion of Whitman College. Both still have league records on the books.
But the league’s most enduring legacy isn’t where its swimmers go. It’s what brings them back. The ribbons fade, the records fall, and the children who once raced become the parents cheering from the pool deck.
“Most of my core childhood summer memories revolve around swim team, and now I get to cheer on my own kids in the very pool where those memories were made,” Callie said.
Boulder Country Club Wahoos: then and now. Callie LoPresti top left.
Photos courtesy of the LoPresti family and the Burrow family
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