Onat Tungac almost drowned as a 6-year-old in his native Turkey. Then he grew up and became a champion swimmer, earning a swimming scholarship to Henderson State University.
The 28-year-old Tungac, now the aquatics coordinator at The Center of Bryant, recalls his near-death experience while seated in his office. He remembers the event as small pictures in his mind. His family, who lived in Izmir, was on vacation in southern Turkey, and there was an indoor pool at the hotel with a kiddie pool next to it. A young Tungac had been enjoying the child-size pool but noticed the adults jumping into and having fun in the larger pool. He wanted to join the fun.
“I didn’t realize it was that deep so I just jumped in,” Tungac says. “I still remember it. I have that picture in my mind. I remember I tried to come up to the surface, and finally someone grabbed me and pulled me out.”
While beneath the pool’s surface, Tungac had swallowed a lot of water, and laid out next to the pool, he was panicking to breathe. Finally, he threw up the water he’d swallowed.
The next day, Tungac’s mother told him he was taking swimming lessons. Tungac resisted, wanting no part of pools or water again, but moms being moms, Tungac was soon taking swimming lessons, two hours a day on Saturdays and Sundays. “I hated it,” he says. “Oh my gosh, I hated it.”
The water was cold. The experience of being in the pool, coming so soon after a near drowning, was scary. Sometimes Tungac would ask to go to the bathroom and then hide in the showers. But then a girl came along. A girl from Tungac’s school that he “kind of” liked at the time. Tungac decided he’d stick with the swimming lessons. Two years later, he was still taking them.
But then something happened. As it often happens with an athlete who makes the jump from the mediocre masses to being very good, or even great, at his endeavor, somewhere inside Tungac, swimming suddenly made sense. Swimming “clicked” for Tungac.
He competed in his first competitive race at the age of 9. He finished second. By 10, Tungac was winning swimming races, and his times were soon good enough for consideration for the Turkish National Swim Team when he turned 13. The idea of earning a spot on the national team motivated Tungac even more. There was a trophy case at the swimming facility where he trained, and each swimmer who made the national team got a photograph in the trophy case. “I wanted my picture in there as well,” Tungac recalls. “Everyone who walks in sees that first.”
About this time, during the mid- to late ’90s, Derya Büyükuncu — a Turkish, six-time Olympic backstroke and butterfly swimmer — was starring at the University of Michigan. Büyükuncu was an idol for Tungac and other Turkish swimmers. A swimmer to emulate. “When I was 8-, 9-, 10-years-old, I was going to swim meets and everyone was talking about him,” Tungac says. “I saw him, and it was amazing and that’s when I told myself that I wanted to go to the United States, and I wanted to get a swim scholarship, and I want to be like him.”
At the age of 13, Tungac prepared for the competition that could earn him a spot on the national team. He swam, ate right and exercised. Then, shortly before the competition, Tungac suffered an ear infection. There would be no national team for Tungac that year. He’d have to wait until the next year for a shot. The teenager was crushed. He wanted to quit. Didn’t show up for practices. His coach called. His parents talked with him. After 10 days of missed practices, Tungac returned to swimming. The next year, at the age of 14, Tungac earned a spot on the Turkish national team and was competing internationally. Tungac would go on to win a Balkan Junior Swimming Championship, three European Junior Swimming Championships and earn more than 200 medals at Turkish swimming meets.
Throughout it all, there was one goal: a swimming scholarship in the U.S.
COMING TO AMERICA
The first Saturday of June, The Center of Bryant at Bishop Park played host to the Arkansas Bone & Joint Kids Triathlon. At 6:30 a.m., Derek Phillips, parks and recreation director for the City of Bryant, found Tungac at the aquatics center performing some pool maintenance. “He’s in there with a wrench changing some filters and tightening some belts, and gets the pool up and going,” Phillips recalls. “He’s amazing. He works so hard and is dedicated.”
So it goes with Tungac, Phillips says. When asked what kind of aquatics coordinator Tungac is, Phillips doesn’t temper his praise. “Wow, he’s top-notch. He’s the best. He knows everything about the programming side of it, the financial side of it and the mechanical side of it.”
Tungac’s office is in a corner of the 24,000-square-foot, glass-walled building that houses the aquatics center. The smell of chlorine hangs heavy in the air. Tungac’s office is tiny compared to the hangar-like size of the aquatics center. The office is also sparsely decorated. Some photographs. Awards. A diploma for a bachelor’s in business administration from Henderson State University, the college where a new-to-the-States Tungac arrived in August 2003.
After graduating high school in Turkey, Tungac took a year off to study English and swim. He’d been learning English in Turkey since the fourth grade, but elementary English. Just enough to get by — not enough to pass the SAT. Not enough to gain admission to a college or university in the United States.
“It is really tough to get your English to a certain level when you are planning on going to another country and actually going to school and learning in that language,” Tungac says. “It’s really tough.”
While Tungac studied for the English-language Test of English as a Foreign Language and swam, he also reached out to NCAA swim programs. He found the top programs and emailed a basic resume and swim times in the backstroke and freestyle to around 25 Division II schools and eight Division I schools. Some schools replied and said they only had a women’s team. Others said they had no spots or didn’t reply at all. Some said they were interested. By the summer of 2003, with his English and grades ready, Tungac focused on three programs that offered a swimming scholarship to him: Wayne State University in Detroit; Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss.; and Henderson.
Delta State had a handful of Turkish swimmers on its team at the time, but Tungac felt as though the coach there was slow in replying to emails. Longtime Red Wave coach Coak Matthews was quick in replying, though. He even called Tungac one night, wanting to hear his English and asking about his swimming times. Tungac’s father’s advice? “This coach really wants you. Let’s go for this.”
So, Arkadelphia unseen, Tungac headed out on his first U.S. trip to Arkansas in August 2003. His first impression, coming from the third largest city in Turkey, a metropolis with roughly the same population as the whole state of Arkansas? He was “pretty disappointed.” Along with another Turkish swimmer, he was met at the airport in Little Rock at night by some Red Wave swimmers and driven into the darkness of Arkansas.
“You pass [Benton on Interstate 30] and after that it is nothing,” Tungac says. “I thought I was getting kidnapped.”
And what about tall buildings, like in Izmir? His new American friends joked he’d be living in the tallest building in Arkadelphia — the fourth floor of the men’s dormitory at Henderson. There was an adjustment period. Homesickness. Doubts. But by the second semester, after spending the Christmas break with some Turkish friends in the U.S., life and swimming once again “clicked” for Tungac. He focused on his finance major, and he started making a name for himself in the pool, earning All-American honors his freshman year.
By the time graduation approached in 2008, Tungac was at home in the U.S. He was a four-year team captain and two-time team MVP, an All-American swimmer with eight conference championships, two conference records and six school records, and a four-year Academic All-Conference member. He wanted to stay and work in the U.S., even turning down an invite to compete for a spot on the Turkish swim team for the 2008 Olympics.
He worked in banking and coached swimming in central Arkansas before hearing the aquatics center at The Center of Bryant was opening. He’d coached the Saline County Swim Team Barracudas before, so he applied for the position in 2010 and got the job.
“When I was hired, there was a big hole and a small hole,” Tungac says of the center. “I’ve been here the whole time, through construction.”
SWIM TOWN, ARK.
The Center of Bryant’s aquatics center is a popular spot. Roughly 1,500 children are enrolled in swimming lessons, and 500 children are a part of one of the five swim teams based at the center, including the Bryant Aquatics Swim School, an AAU swimming organization; the Central Arkansas Sports Club Racers, a part of USA Swimming (Tungac is the team’s co-head coach); the Barracudas; and swim teams at Bryant and Benton high schools.
There are Mom and Me Lessons, Silver Splash and water aerobics classes at the center along with recreation swimming. The AAU state swim meet is coming up at the center, which also played host to the Henderson State University Invitational this year.
Even during the winter, the center is crowded. Besides the year-round swim lessons, team training and other programs, the center hosts about four movie nights a year, playing Finding Nemo and other family-friendly movies to large crowds of young swimmers and parents.
“If it keeps growing we’ll have to grow our facilities,” Phillips says. “We’re kind of maxed out right now with space. It’s steadily grown since we opened it in early 2011.
“I never thought it would be what it is. It’s so much ... more popular than I ever thought it would be. Every time we start a new program for swim lessons or a swim team, it fills right up.”
Being popular and packed is a good challenge for Tungac and the Bryant Parks and Recreation Department.
“It’s a sign that it’s working,” Tungac says. “I wouldn’t be able to do this without all the support. The city, the park commission, the mayor and the council.”
It could be said that Bryant is central Arkansas’ swimming destination. A few years ago that statement would have seemed unlikely. But unlikely events occur. Sometimes a 6-year-old Turkish child almost drowns and grows up to be the king of swim in Bryant.
FINISH LINE LOVE: Onat Tungac, aquatics coordinator at The Center of Bryant, had a plan. Kind of. Or at least he had an engagement ring when it came time to propose to his girlfriend of just over a year, Tracy Johanning, in March 2010.
The couple had met at a 10 Fitness in west Little Rock where Tracy worked and Tungac worked out. “It was funny because I would go over there and work out late at night after [swim] practice and she was the closing shift,” Tungac says. “I talked to her for like two months.” Besides talking, Tungac also made sure he flexed a little for Tracy. “I tell you,” he says, “I did quite a few push-ups and pull-ups in front of her.” The couple went on their first date in February 2009.
Tungac knew he was going to propose on the day of the 2010 Little Rock Marathon. He thought about doing it prior to the marathon, but scrapped that plan because he didn’t want Tracy’s mind somewhere else when she was running a marathon. Likewise, he jettisoned the idea of proposing mid-marathon. So he settled on proposing to her when she finished the marathon. But how to gain access to the finish line area? Tungac got the attention of marathon coordinators at the finish line and told them his plan. They wanted to see a ring so they’d know he was legit. Tungac produced a ring, and he was in, awaiting Tracy. Soon word spread to local media about his plan, and reporters and cameramen surrounded him.
For her part, Tracy was a little peeved at Tungac the day of the marathon. Tracy’s birthday had been the Friday prior, and she thought he had forgotten her birthday. “I was really mad at him,” she says.
“I was coming across the finish line, and I felt horrible and it was a bad race, and I saw him and I thought he was taking pictures,” Tracy says. “I thought, ‘Why is he behind the finish line? He’s not supposed to be there.’ I saw all these cameras and didn’t know what was going on.”
Tracy finished the marathon with a time of 3:21.36, and Tungac proposed right there at the finish line. Tracy answered with a “yes.” The couple married in August 2010.
Three years later, Tracy, a competitive marathon runner who has finished 10 marathons now, and placed second in the 2013 Little Rock Marathon (her time was 3:00:14), says in jest, “I tell him that he tricked me. Caught me at my weakest.” But Tungac adds, “I think I was more nervous. I didn’t really have it planned out.”