LYNN — “Can you imagine? “asks Denise Silva, who coaches swimming for Lynn Classical. “Forty-four years, and all of it with a smile on his face.”
When the swimmers reached the finish line at last Saturday’s Lynn City Swim Meet it was just an athletic event that came to a close. An era ended too, and with it comes a legacy that will be tough to top.
Brad Tilley of Lynn Tech officially retired after 44 years of coaching swimming in Lynn. Though he’s been at Tech for 32 of those years, he’s made the rounds when it comes to teaching Lynn kids how to swim.
“I think,” Tilley said Monday, “that I’m the longest consecutive-serving coach in the history of the city.”
His 44 years put him three ahead of the late Ron Bennett, who coached basketball and baseball at Lynn English for 41. But the two of them were of the same mind when it came to what they considered the most important aspect of coaching: academics.
“Every student in my program gave me a progress report every week,” said Tilley, who turns 70 in May. “If there were any problems, if any kid needed help, that following Monday you weren’t at practice. You were meeting with the teachers in the classes where you were having problems.”
Charlie Rowe, who was his assistant at Tech for 18 years, said his interest in academics stemmed from the fact that Tilly always “was more concerned with who well the person did rather than how well the athlete did.
“He was a stickler for grades, homework and doing the right thing,” he said.
Silva, who had him as a coach when she was at Classical, agrees.
“The word ‘student’ comes before ‘athlete,'” Silva said. “It’s so important. He believed in his system, and he got the kids to buy into it.
“So, all of those kids went to class, because they all wanted to make sure they were able to swim.
“Brad has added a lot to the program. He knows the pool, and knows his strokes. We’ve all learned a lot from him, not only about swimming, but about how to deal with situations away from swimming.”
As a result of Tilley’s diligence, the Tech swim team, for the 10th straight year, received the MIAA Team Scholar Athlete award.
“He’s most proud of that,” said Rowe.
Of course it’s easy to see why, once students are introduced to the city’s swimming program, it’s easy to get swept up in it.
“One of the most important aspects of this program is the family-like atmosphere,” Tilley said. “This all emanated from Peter Sawin, the man who began it all.”
Sawin came into the Lynn school system in 1976 to teach physical education and be in charge of athletic facilities in the system. That same year, Sawin, for whom the Tech swimming pool is named, lost his assistant and Tilley became assistant coach and diving instructor.
Ed Johns, who was the assistant superintendent at the time, asked Tilley to be an assistant substitute for the shop program, so he got his certification to teach technical education at Pickering. He was there until the Fecteau-Leary school opened, when he taught tech and physical education there.
Along the way, Tilley has also been an assistant football coach at Tech and a baseball coach at Pickering.
His travels in swimming have been just as varied. He started out coaching a combined program involving all three Lynn public schools, and then went to Classical (Sawin took English) when the program was split. By 1986, he was exclusively at Tech, where he remained as a coach until last Saturday.
Although the Tigers have had their high points as a program (they won the city meet four straight years from 2009 through 2012, and the girls won the league championship in the lower division of the Commonwealth Conference this year), there are other things — those that you might not notice at first glance — that elicit more pride from him.
“I’d say when the kids come to tryouts in December, probably one-third of them can’t swim a lap,” Tilley said. “By the end of the season, they’re all swimming competitively. Those are great things to point to.”