'56 Swimmer Tells About Olympics

When it comes to choosing colleges, Olympic swimmers are notorious for their poor discretion. Autumn after autumn foolhardy mermen wander blindly down no New Haven, join the Eli Swimming Team, and live for four years deluded into thinking they are getting the best coaching-education combination possible.

Kins '56. This number-one Australian

An exception, however, is David Haw-breast stroke entry at the recent Olympiad turned thumbs down on Yale and chose Harvard

At eighteen Hawkins holds every Australian breast stroke record there is. He is the British Empire champion at 200 meters. At our National A.A.U. Championships held in August he took two third places. There is only one faster breast stroker in an American college today, Ohio State's senior Jerry Hollan.

Hawkins started early in his home town on New South Wales, where everybody swims at the age of four of five. His home is just a quarter mile from what Australians considers the world's best surf beach.

His competitive swimming began in 1948 when he won three junior titles in a local swimming club. The next year, under the guidance of his first coach, Hawkins finished third in the New South Wales State Meet in the 100 meter race.

Empire champ

Two years later he jumped from third in the state to first in the British Empire with a win in the 200 moter championship race at the Empire Games in New Zealand. The next year, he won two Australian championships and broke every existing Australian breast stroke record.

These performances won him a position on the 1952 Olympic swimming team. It took him a month and a half to get from Sydney to Heisinki, Finland, site of the games. With him went his coach, who happened to be one of Australia's contrimutions to the Olympic Decathalon meet.

Dave finished tenth in the Olympics. His time equalled his lowest to that date. But he was not used to swimming against faster men than himself. Nevertheless, he was the youngest to finish in the top ten.

Hawkins had lots of praise for relations with athletes of other nations at the Games. Although the Finns provided interpreters, most of the talking was done by sign language. "It was wonderful the way the representative from all the countries mixed," he says. "The Russians were very friendly. We could visit them and they came to us." Hawkins thinks that Americans are all wrong about the Russian women. "Some of them were quite nice. The only ones that made the newspapers were the discus throwers."

One of their girls, a diver,was particularly nice. She could speak a little English and did a lot of interpreting for the others. This same girl, according to Hawkins broke out of the Russian camp one night and went out with an Australian diver. They went to a club and in a movie in downtown Helsinki, all against Soviet training rules.

She got back into camp the same way but the secret date was a bit too much for her. If Hawkins remembered right, she lost her meet.