In 1987 former Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager
Al Campanis
, explaining on ABC’s "Nightline" why blacks could never become baseball field managers or team executives, argued that swimming proved that blacks didn’t have what it takes to reach the top.
"The just don’t have the buoyancy," Campanis told an astonished Ted Koppel.
"I put that one on my bulletin board," Ellis recalls. "For motivation."
But Ellis believes white racist attitudes aren’t solely to blame. He says many blacks are equally guilty for buying into the stereotype, dismissing swimming as a white country club activity or avoiding the water because it’s better to look good than to swim well.
"You still hear people talking about swimming, black females talking about not wanting to get their hair wet, or folks talking about not wanting to catch colds," Ellis says with a sigh.
The reluctance from within the black community and resistance among some whites within organized swimming to embrace a black swim team didn’t deter Ellis from building his program. But he and some of his former students admit it wasn’t easy.
Ellis recounts tales of going to swim meets where officials were loath to announce the winning times of some of his swimmers. If a PDR swimmer won a heat, Ellis says, it wasn’t unusual for white parents to approach him and ask what he was feeding his team. "Parents would accuse us of being on steroids," says Atiba Wade, 28, who swam for Ellis for 11 years before attending the University of Georgia on a swim scholarship. "Things like that were very sobering. But you can never let it diminish your spirit. You don’t let things tear you down."
That’s a lesson Wade says he learned from Ellis’ tough-love coaching approach. The heat pump at city-run pool where his charges practice at 5 a.m. doesn’t always work. The some of indoor facility’s windows won’t shut, allowing a winter breeze that adds a chill to water that’s already ice cube cold. There’s no state-of-the art weight room or fancy locker room, like some of the more affluent swim programs have.
But Ellis says those factors shouldn’t be a roadblock from succeeding -- in or out of the pool.
"He’s tough, but not a brutal taskmaster," says Wade who interrupted his training schedule for the 2008 Olympic team trials to swim as body double for actor Kevin Phillips, III in the movie. "He encourages you, doesn’t want you to quit. Jim sets the bar at an Olympic standard, at a world-class standard."
Ellis caught the attention of Hollywood after a writer read a profile about him in The New York Times five years ago and approached the coach about writing his life story. Ellis agreed, but thought nothing of it at the time. "He sent me stuff. I read it and threw it in the trash, he sent some more, threw it in the trash," Ellis recalls. "Then he sent me a contract. After that, things happened within a year."
Lionsgate films got interested in the story and sought A-list stars like Howard, who earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for playing a drug-dealing pimp-turned rap artist in "Hustle & Flow," to be in the film.
"He’s a bright young man, energetic and very intense," Ellis says of Howard. "He hung out for about a month before the shoot, hanging out with the kids. I don’t how he picked up so much about me."
The glory years of the PDR team have past, Ellis admits. A program that boasted 150 people at its peak is now down to about 40 kids. Ellis continues his hard-charging ways though, barking stroke combination and times from the slippery deck of the pool. He’s hoping that the upcoming movie will produce a renaissance in his program and maybe, just maybe, persuade some generous entrepreneurs to help build a world-class training facility to teach minorities to swim for fun and competition.
"If you gave me what some of the country clubs have what the established white teams have, we’d put someone in the Olympics," he says with a competitive glint in his eye.
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