13-year-old Linda Goldstein
has some lofty dreams
on her swimming horizon
At age eight, she competed in the
USS state meet against nine and 10
year-olds. She did not win, but she
was the youngest participant.
The family spent a great deal of
time flying or driving to summer
swim meets across the Midwest when
Barb and Susie were competing. At
age 10, it was Linda's turn. Ralph ex-
plains that as a self-employed in-
vestor, it's easy for him to get away for
"long weekends" with his wife and
daughters, and the family enjoys it.
Linda is an eighth grader at Or-
chard Lake Middle School. Next year
she will attend West Bloomfield High
Schol. She plans to swim for the high
school girls team in the fall, then re-
join the Stingrays after the high
school campaign.
Linda moves up to United States
Swimming's 13-14-year-old division
this season. But Coach McClune says,
"She's still a favorite in Michigan ..
Linda right now could come in, just
the three events that she scored state
records in, and do extremely well in
the (high school) state meet. Going
5:07 in the 500 free would make her
top six in the high school state meet,
Class A!"
Linda took the summer off from
competition. Now that she has resum-
ed practice, she is on a tight schedule.
She gets home from school around
2:45 p.m., does her homework, then
goes to swimming practice at 5:30.
She returns home about 8:30 p.m.
McClune admits that some swim-
mers suffer from overwork, or "burn-
out" at Linda's age. But he says that
Linda not only shows no signs of burn-
out, she is still improving. "She
always seems to go beyond, above,
what our goals are for her. She seems
to have a lot of fun with her training.
She's never been so serious that we've
ever been worried about her burning
out. She has a lot of fun with her
friends that she has on the team,
training in the water. When it comes
down to the end of the season for the
Coach Chuck McClune clowns with his star.
big meet that we're gonna rest her for,
she always seems to go a little bit
faster than we've always expected. I
honestly think that- we haven't real-
ly seen how fast she can go yet."
While Linda will swim on an all-
girls team in high school next year,
she had almost the opposite ex-
perience last fall with the Stingrays,
who practice in groups based solely on
ability. While the older Stingray girls
were competing with their high
school teams, Linda swam with a
group of the team's older boys. "She
was kind of like the pet of the group,"
reports McClune. "Most of the guys
that were in this group were
anywhere from 14 to 18 years old!'
McClune describes Linda's per-
sonality as "kind of bubbly. She's very
light-hearted, she's real easy to work
with, because she'll joke around with
you and when you need to get down
to serious work, she'll buckle down
and do that for you. She's a dream to
work with. She's the kind of person
that, if you had a whole team of peo-
ple like her, it would make your job
too easy!'
On a recent evening in the base-
ment of the Goldstein's West Bloom-
field home, with a large case brimm-
ing with just some of her trophies
nearby, Linda seems unaffected by
her success. She matter-of-factly
describes her accomplishments, often
leaving her justifiably-proud parents
to add the embellishments. Is she ever
surprised by her success? "Uh huh, a
lot;' she responds. "A lot of times I
didn't think I'd do as good, or I was
almost positive I wasn't gonna go as
fast as I did and I went faster and won
it. That happened a lot!'
She also gives credit to McClune
and the other Stingray coaches who
train her. But whether it's learned or
natural, she has the strong mental at-
titude necessary for any athlete. "I
push myself when I'm swimming .. .
Before every race my coach tells me
what to think about and what to just
ignore, so I try to think of that before.
Then, when you're in the water, when
you're either a little bit ahead or a lit-
tle bit behind, you can't really think
about it. You've just gotta give it all
you've got and go!'
Of course, Linda generally swims
more than a little bit ahead of her
competition. "Now I don't think about
the person I'm swimming next to,
because most of the time they're real-
ly far behind me, so I can't really stay
with them or else my time will go
down . . . You have to swim your own
race. So I just think about my own
race and now, if somebody else wants
to go ahead of me, I let 'em, and I
swim my own race, how I know I can
swim it."
A shared experience for Linda
and her father is the Maccabi Games.
Ralph played on the gold-medal win-
ning U.S. basketball team in the 1961
games in Israel. Linda participated in
her first Maccabi competition at Mac-
cabi's North American Youth Games
in Toronto last year. She took home
five gold medals and one silver. She
did not compete in this summer's
regional youth names in Cleveland
because she took the summer off, but
she is planning on competing at the
North American Games in Chicago
next August.
Since the only Jewish organiza-
tion to which the family belongs is the
Jewish Community Center, Linda
found the Maccabi event interesting.
"I've never been with just Jewish peo-
ple before." She stayed in a dorm with
.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
27