TR Santos’ idea of fun would be some people’s worst nightmare.
He has swum from one side of the Golden Gate Bridge to the other twice and once spent five hours swimming 9 miles in open water.
“That was fun. You get in a rhythm, and you don’t even think about it. Your body just goes,” he said.
Santos, 60, is the aquatics director for the new $6.6 million Russellville Aquatics Center, scheduled for a grand opening June 29.
He moved to Russellville from Memphis, Tennessee, almost eight weeks ago.
“I love the fact that I can drive places, and there are fields with cows. This is just heaven,” he said.
The California native was aquatics director at the Racquet Club of Memphis and head swim coach for a U.S. team.
Swimming and coaching competitive swimming have been Santos’ life.
“Dad was an avid swimmer, and he’s the one that got us involved,” Santos said of his late father, Tony.
Santos has four brothers and a sister.
“We all still compete — master’s swimming, open-water, long-distance swimming,” Santos said.
His mother, Jackie, was the opposite.
“I never saw her put her face in the water,” he said. She went to swim meets and even the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, where Santos’ brother Roque swam and was an American record holder for the 200 breaststroke.
Santos was coaching by age 13 for a city summer swim team, the Chico AquaJets.
“The coach at the time, for whatever reason, saw something in me,” Santos said. He was in charge of workouts and swim meets.
“I had a blast,” Santos said.
At 19, he coached his high school team under a sponsor teacher and continued coaching the AquaJets.
Santos went to California State University-Chico and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biomechanics of swimming, following in the footsteps of his mentor, Ernie Maglisch. Santos’ master thesis was an analysis of the swimming strokes of 18 Olympians, whom he filmed.
His first head-coaching job was at age 19 in Gridley, California, a town of 2,000 about 30 minutes from his hometown. The North Valley
Aquatics League, which included 11 cities, had 30 to 50 kids when he started; he built it up to 135 by the time he left. During the summer, he continued to coach the AquaJets.
After he finished his master’s degree, Santos got an assistant-coach’s job with his mentor at California State University in Bakersfield, with whom Santos had been coaching since he was 13.
“I was outgoing, enjoyed being with people,” he said. “It was fun because I was part of the recruiting effort to build our team,” he said.
In 1990, he went to Kanakuk Camps near Branson,
Missouri, to work during the summers.
“I had to look up where Missouri was on a map,” he said, laughing.
In 1991, the Kids Across America camp opened for 300 inner-city kids.
“It was an absolute disaster; the only thing we did right was hang in there,”
he said.
Santos said he was part of a team that helped structure it and “find out how to do it better.” It worked, because by the time Santos left, 7,000 kids attended the eight-week camp each year.
“Some [of the kids], for the first time, laughed. They got steady meals and got to hear the Gospel, and they learned there was something else than the poverty they face and the violence they face — and there was a hope that God had a plan for them,” Santos said.
He was there 13 years as camp director and director of development.
In 2005, he and his family moved to Memphis, where he got involved in real estate and started coaching again for a summer league at the Memphis Country Club. He also coached the year-round swim program Memphis Splash, a group of inner-city kids.
“It was really gratifying,” he said.
He also gave private stroke instruction to youngsters.
Santos said members of the Racquet Club, parents of children he’d worked with on stroke development, asked him to start a U.S. swim team, which he did.
When he began looking for another opportunity in the aquatics-center world, the job in Russellville came to the top, he said.
“I want to be part of a community that’s willing to invest this kind of money and use my background to create a great aquatics program,” Santos said. “It will really transform the community into a swimming community.”
He said an aquatics center such as Russellville’s has the ability to reach many segments of the population.
“It’s a wonderful way to reach kids and families, special-
needs kids and senior citizens,” he said.
The facility features a therapy/exercise pool; an eight-lane, 25-yard competition pool, which will also be used for recreational swimming; and a splash pad
for kids.
Russellville doesn’t have a year-round swim program, he said.
“All they have is some summer swimming, a small league with three teams they compete against. To turn around and say we’re going to build a $6.6 million aquatics center — it’s sort of like in Field of Dreams: ‘If you build it, they will come,’”
Santos said.
The 24,800-square-foot center, at 1300 N. Phoenix Ave., is being paid for with a 1-cent sales tax, which 60 percent of residents voted in 2013 to renew.
Gearing up for the opening in June, he has hired a staff of about 18 so far, including Assistant Director Melissa Beatty.
“We need closer to [a staff of] 28; about nine more lifeguards are needed,”
Santos said.
He said the job is a perfect fit for him.
“It’s what I love to do — structure, organize it and just manage staff to do a great job,” he said.
Phase 2 of the aquatics center is to build outdoor water features, which Santos said Mayor Randy Horton “is real keen on.”
“It’s a wonderful way to get families together and people together,” Santos said.
Horton said Santos’ enthusiasm is going to be a positive for the city, as well as the experience Santos brings to the position.
“I think the most exciting part is his experience; he’s got a lot of experience building programs. He’s not just going to unlock the doors and count heads. He’s going to start swimming programs and promote [the facility] for leisure and as a health initiative, and also for competition,”
Horton said.
Santos said he wants Russellville to be “a model of being creative in how to get people involved with aquatics.”
He has talked with a private school about putting swimming in the curriculum, where every student will be required to learn to swim.
“I’m naturally an encourager,” Santos said. “It’s gratifying to get someone in the water and show them they can do it and how it will transform their lives.”
Santos said he wants to add programs, including aqua aerobics, a boot camp with intense aerobics, an elementary swim league and, “obviously, swim lessons.”
He also wants to start a U.S. swim program for youth ages 5 to 18.
“I have my registered U.S. team from Memphis, and I can change its name and do it in Arkansas,” he said.
Santos said some coaches work swimmers too long, “too much yardage, and they burn out. I’ve seen it time and time again. A 10-year-old doesn’t need to be in the water seven days a week.”
Not that Santos doesn’t believe in pushing one’s self to the limits.
In the 1990s, he twice swam the length of the Golden Gate Bridge.
“I swam underneath the bridge all the way to the other side to Sausalito without a wet suit. They had to carry me out of the water both times,” he said.
The first time, he swam the almost 2 miles in 47 minutes; the second time, the swim took him an hour and 40 minutes.
“We got started late, and the current changed. Only half the people made it,” he said. Santos said he had to swim horizontally because of the current. “The Golden Gate was getting farther and farther away. I was trying to get to the other side, and they were pulling everybody out of the water. I almost passed out. My head was foggy; my arms kept moving, but I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t talk.”
He said the experience was worth it.
“It was astounding to look up, and you’re looking at the Golden Gate Bridge from the water,” he said.
Santos also swam across Lake Tahoe on a four-man
relay team.
“We’d go at 30-minute intervals,” he said. “It took eight hours to get across the lake.
“Yeah, that was fun,” he said.
Santos, who also bikes and runs marathons, said nothing beats swimming as a way to get fit and healthy.
“You can take a child at 3 years old and provide aquatics programming all the way up to their 80s or 90s,” he said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.