Saturday, July 3, 2010

Pretty nice piece here, the legend of Butch lives on...

YMCA Press Release - The 2010 Glen S Hummer Huntington Mile will take place on Saturday, June 19th at Lake Clare in Huntington, Indiana. The 1 mile cable swim will run throughout the morning with a 5K swim being held in the afternoon. Over 400 swimmers participate from the across the midwest.

For more information and registration for the 2010 Huntington Mile, please visit http://www.huntingtonmile.org.

Glen Hummer coached Huntington YMCA swim teams from 1933 to 1977. He had receive many accolades in swimming and some called him a pioneer of Open Water Swimming. Hummer’s teams entered thirty-three of the championship meets winning ten firsts, nine seconds, five thirds, one fifth, two sixths, and five other places. During the 1960’s the Huntington YMCA teams won the national title seven times and finished second, twice. Glen won the first National YMCA Coach of the Year Award in 1969.

As the Huntington YMCA teams racked up wins and honors, Glen’s reputation as an outstanding swim coach spread. In 1970 the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States honored Hummer by selecting him to coach the United States National Team for an extended tour. While on tour he conducted swimming clinics and exhibitions in Alaska, Japan, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii. Hummer was nominated for the coaching staff of the U. S. Swim Team for the 1971 Pan American Games, and in 1972 he was again selected for the coaching staff of the U.S. Swim Team for the Olympic Games in Munich. In all, Glen attended four Olympiads: Rome, 1960; Tokyo, 1964; Mexico, 1968; and Munich in 1972. Two of Hummer’s swimmers went on to win Olympic medals. Gary Dilley earned a silver medal in the 1964 Tokyo Games, and Matt Vogel won two gold medals in Montreal in 1976.

Huntington Y teams won twelve national long-distance swimming championships, with thirty-five of his swimmers becoming National AAU All-Americans. Glen was elected AAU Long Distance Swimming Chairman for 1968 and 1969 and was re-appointed for 1975 and 1976. He rewrote and updated the AAU long distance rules which contributed to renewed interest in that phase of swimming. Glen was meet director for six National AAU Senior Long Distance Swimming Championships held in Huntington and for one in Grove Oklahoma. In 1978 the Glen S. Hummer Award was established and named in Glen’s honor. The award is presented annually by the Open Water Swimming Committee to the person or group making the greatest contribution to open water (long distance) swimming.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Welcome

Hello fellow Hummer alumni. We each have memories of the huge influence Glen S. Hummer had on us all. The Huntington YMCA is still conducting a continuing funding campaign for the marvelous new facility which replaces the one we all swam in and more since the team began in 1933. This space is for us to meet and/or meet up again. There were 250 at the reunion on June 16, 2007, coinciding with the newly reestablished Huntington Mile at ole Lake Clare in which many of us swam again. All are invited and welcomed to submit reminiscences here (click on "comments" in the section below.) See some of you, again we hope, at the 2010 Glen S. Hummer Huntington Masters Mile. And visit us on facebook too at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#%21/group.php?gid=100802262318&ref=ts



.....

Huntington YMCA Building Program

Note: To donate to the fund-raising campaign for the new YMCA (and its Hummer Pool) contact:

Dan Akeley, Executive Director, Huntington YMCA, 607 Warren St., Huntington, IN 46750, 260-356-4200, ymcadan@kconline.com

From The Herald Press12/18/06

Goal: $8 million; In hand: $5.4 million; Yet to raise: $2.6 million

It will take $8 million to build a new YMCA, and that's the amount the Y's fund-raising committee has set as its goal. With the $2 million gift from Parkview Huntington Hospital - seven acres of land worth $450,000 and a pledge of $1.55 million in cash from the hospital's Community Benefit dollars - the capital campaign committee now has $5.4 million in hand, said Dan Akeley, the YMCA's executive director.

That $5.4 million, which includes pledges that will be paid over the next five years, came in as the result of a campaign that began in May as YMCA volunteers contacted potential major donors, Akeley said. That leaves the YMCA with $2.6 million yet to raise. Some of that will come from additional major donors, Akeley said, but the Y hopes to raise $250,000 from people throughout Huntington County who are everyday users (or former users) of the facility. An effort to reach those people will begin in late January and continue until June, Akeley said. YMCA volunteers will begin with personal contacts and later use phone calls and letters to solicit donations.

From The Herald Press, 12/18/06

The inside story: Nearly double the usable space

By CINDY KLEPPER, City Editor

The new Parkview Huntington YMCA will encompass about 52,000 square feet, all on one floor, with two pools, two basketball floors, and an elevated walking track. By comparison, the current facility has about 30,000 square feet of usable space on three levels, one pool, one basketball court, and no dedicated place to walk - although it does have numerous nooks and crannies that may have had a function when the Warren street building opened in 1930, but now serve no useful purpose.

The new building was designed by Moake Park Group, a Fort Wayne-based architectural firm whose work can be seen in the Parkview Huntington Hospital building as well as the Jorgensen Family YMCA in Allen County. Moake Park's design for the Huntington YMCA was intended for a 14-acre site north of Huntington that the YMCA board originally planned to purchase, said Dan Akeley, the Y's executive director. The building and parking areas would have occupied only seven acres of that site, Akeley said, and can be moved to the Parkview site practically unchanged. "The floor plans will basically be the same," Akeley said. "It worked for both sites." The remainder of the original 14-acre site would have held a soccer field, two retention ponds, and a fitness trail. At the new site, retention ponds are already in place outside the YMCA's seven acres. Although there's no room for a soccer field, there's a possibility of additional property being made available for soccer sometime in the future. In addition to surveying members about what they wanted in a new facility, YMCA board members checked out features of other recently built YMCAs.

"We learned a lesson from the Jorgensen YMCA," Akeley said. "They have one pool, and if someone has an accident in the pool, they have to shut down the whole thing." The Huntington Y board decided to go with two pools, side by side. "If somebody has an accident, we can just shut the one pool down," Akeley said. The smaller pool will have a "zero," or sloped, entry making it accessible to people in wheelchairs and others with limited mobility. It's water will be warm enough to be comfortable for swimming and aerobics classes. The second pool will be large enough to be used by swim teams and can also be used to host meets. The gym's two basketball courts can be separated by a curtain. A fitness center will include both free weights and cardio equipment, and an adjacent aerobics/dance area will feature floating floors. A walking track, one-tenth of a mile long, will be suspended around the perimeter of the gym, fitness center, and aerobics/dance area. An expanded child watch area will be located next to two preschool rooms.