Dave Barney: A New Mexico high school swimming legend

Dave Barney has molded a legendary 40-year swimming career - in the desert.

Barney, who will be 83 years old on Jan. 5, has coached Albuquerque Academy to 34 state championships in swimming, 18 in boys and 16 in girls. His overall record entering this season was 923 victories against just 71 defeats. In 1995 he was named the inaugural National Federation Girls High School Swim Coach of the Year and 28 times he has been named New Mexico State Swim Coach of the Year.

His teams either set or still hold 70 state records with 238 individuals and relays claiming gold medals.
 
On a national basis, he has tutored five National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association national champions and 355 of his proteges (140 individuals, 36 relays and 175 academic) have been named NISCA All-Americans.

Oh, yes, and he belongs to five halls of fame with more, probably, on the horizon.

Because his father was in the Army Air Corps, Barney moved often during his youth, in and out of the country. He and twin brother Peter, now a retired college professor, lived in such places as Winthrop, Mass., Rochester, N.H., Lake Charles, La., Biloxi, Miss., Guam and he actually graduated in 1949 from Balboa High School In the Panama Canal Zone.

At one time or another they competed in football, baseball, hockey, softball, boxing and tennis. He and Peter, with no experience, once made the state tennis doubles semifinals in Mississippi.

Asked if he ever dreamed of making a major impact in swimming, Barney exclaimed, "Absolutely never! I thought I was going to be the shortstop for the Boston Red Sox or a boxer."

Even before that while living in Louisiana, Barney dreamed of following in the footsteps of Alvin Dark as a great running back for LSU.

His first taste of swimming came during his senior year in Panama, when tried water polo for eight weeks.

After four years in the U.S. Air Force he returned to the University of New Mexico, where he had played freshman football. By then he was married and had children. To supplement his GI Bill, he would get up at 4 a.m. each day to deliver 300 newspapers. He also delivered mail during the Christmas holidays.

The University of New Mexico built a six-lane pool in 1957 and hired a coach from Denver who immediately began searching for swimmers.

As Barney put it, "My brother and I had cleaned up in intramural swimming and he offered us tuition and books. We swam for two years. We still were playing baseball and hockey."

The real coaching trail, however, began when Bob Barney took a summer job as aquatic director at the Albuquerque Country Club. In the summer of 1961 Bob passed the torch to Dave and he took over a club with just 25 swimmers. Six years later the numbers had reached more than 200.

For six years Dave Barney coached and taught at the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. He was assistant coach in football and head coach in hockey and baseball. He loved the job, but always returned to Albuquerque each summer to coach the country club swimmers.

He explained, "I needed a summer job with some income. If I didn't have that swim job, we'd have starved to death. We had three kids."

After turning down several offers for a few years, he somewhat reluctantly accepted a job at the Albuquerque Academy in 1967 as head of the senior school and head coach of track and field.

Even with his new job, that first year he went back to delivering newspapers - 500 every day at 4 a.m.

"It was good money," he said.

Barney started the girls swim program in 1975 and coached side by side with younger brother Peter, who won three state titles with the boys before he died in 1982. From then on Dave coached both squads.

Looking back at the inaugural year for girls, he noted, "When we first started, we were nothing - no depth. It was a small pool, but we began winning some state titles."

He notched his first girls championship in 1983 and won both boys and girls in 1986. There has been no stopping his swimming juggernaut since then.

One of his first All-Americans, Janet Lyon-Huffman, now is a competing coach at Cibola (Albuquerque).

She related, "For me he was just always a great coach and mentor because he always treated us as special persons. He has a whole lot of love and affection and has got a big heart. He can make people easily feel special. He tends to treat teenagers like young adults, like very capable people. He doesn't talk down to them. He is very intuitive and can read kids pretty well.

"I was getting pretty lost in public schools. He really helped me have confidence when my life was going the other way. He really helped turn things around."

Barney's most famous swimmer may have been Justine Schluntz, who starred at the University of Arizona, was named NCAA Division I Female Athlete of the Year in 2010 and won a Rhodes Scholarship. Another standout,  Kendra Stern of Amherst College, was named NCAA Division III Female Athlete of the Year in 2011. San Diego State sophomore Anika Apostalon is another of Barney's most polished products.

From his boys teams, Barney says, "The best I ever had was Gary Simon. He still holds the oldest record in men's Division I in the 200-yard IM and still swims in masters competition."

His current star, junior Anthony Kim, who broke two state records as a sophomore, echoed the qualities that Lyon-Huffman brought up from almost 35 years earlier.

Kim related, "He really cares for all his swimmers and tries to motivate them to swim as fast as they can. He really just believed in me. He told me before the meet that I was going to break those state records and that really inspired me."

Besides his obvious ability to motivate teenagers, Barney can attribute a lot of his success to sound strategy.

He pointed out, "One of my pet peeves is over-training. When we have JV practice on Thursday, the varsity gets the day off. Over Christmas there is a 10-day break (with no practice). We are a sprint-specific team. Ten days before the state meet, we are down to less than 1,000 yards. A lot of teams are still banging out 3,000 to 4,000 yards."

Barney retired as an English teacher in 1995, freeing him to begin designing the spacious Albuquerque Academy pool and now has designed five area pools.

The first one, however, is his pride and joy.

He recalled, "I spent 10 months working on the design of our pool - 10 of the best months of my life. It's called the David E. Barney and Peter B. Barney Competition Pool. I made my name on that pool. We've had the state meets there since 2000."

He is a man of many talents and many interests. He loves to sail and owns a 12 1/2-foot Herreshoff. He has taught at sailing camps. He also is a voracious reader and writer (he has written a book of poems), belonging to several organizations. He enjoys classical music.

Above all he is a "people person" who never will get old. He is a great story teller and has the vast experience to captivate his audiences - young and old.

Paul Torno, who is editor of the NISCA Journal, has lunch with Barney periodically.

He noted, "If I go out with him in Albuquerque, the odds are good that somebody is going to come up to him and want to connect with him. He's got to be a great relationship builder. I continue to be impressed."

Tom Cyprus probably knows Barney as well as anybody, having been his assistant for eight years and coaching his own USA swim club team in the offseason.

Cyprus broke down the true secret of his success when he noted, "He relates really well to the kids on a personal level. In doing so he knows how to motivate each swimmer. He's very personable with the kids and they swim their butts off for him. They don't want to let coach Barney down."