SPORTS

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Linda Goldstein finds friends and success again at West Bloomfield High,

STEVE STEIN

Special to The Jewish News

here's no place like
home. There's no place
like home. There's no
place like home."
Linda Goldstein is
no farm girl from Kansas.
And she's no movie character.
But Goldstein, a 17-year-old
12th-grader at West Bloom-
field High School, shares a
bond with the fictional
Dorothy from The Wizard of
Oz.
They agree home is where
the heart is. It took three
years for Goldstein to come to
that realization, but she feels
it was worth the wait.
Despite having to deal with
the death of her father, Ralph
Goldstein, just weeks before
she began her freshman year
at West Bloomfield, Linda
was a Class A state swim
champion that fall.
Three years later, the best
she could do was finish fourth
in the Class A meet held in
November at Eastern
Michigan University. But in
many ways, this past season
was much more gratifying for
Goldstein.
After swimming for the
Lakers as a freshman and
sophomore and earning All-
American honors from the
National Interscholastic
Swimming Coaches Associa-
tion, Goldstein left West
Bloomfield and transferred to
Farmington Hills Our Lady of
Mercy.
The change of schools was
accompanied by a change of
residence. Goldstein and her
family moved from West
Bloomfield to Farmington
Hills to be closer to Mercy.
"I was looking for some-
thing different and I tried to
find a school which had the
most to offer me," Goldstein
said. "A big reason why I
chose Mercy was that Chuck
McClune, my coach for a long
time with the Michigan
Stingrays team, was just
named the coach there. My
mom (Mary Ellen) was all for
it."
Mercy was different, all
right. For one thing, its stu-
dent population was less than
half that of West Bloomfield's
approximately 1,700.

Photo by Glenn Triest

T

"But, by the end of the first
semester, it seemed like I
knew everybody," Goldstein
said.
But that's not all that was
different. Mercy is a private,
Catholic, all-girls school
which requires its students to
wear uniforms. The rigorous
academic schedule includes
religious classes, and swim
team practices were difficult
and serious.
It wasn't easy for a Jewish
girl to cope in a Catholic
school. Goldstein thought her
fellow students accepted her,
but some of her teachers
weren't as open-minded.
"I'd say 85 percent of my
teachers were fine, but I felt
uncomfortable in classes with
the other teach _ ers," Goldstein
said.
"You know which teachers
made me feel the most com-
fortable? The nuns. They
were warm and friendly.
Around Christmas time, they
asked me how I celebrate
Chanukah. They were
curious about it and in-
terested in what I had to say."
Goldstein said two of her
three required religious

classes — Values and the
Media and Relationships —
didn't focus on religion at all.
Her Christian Morality class
was informational, not a dai-
ly sermon.
While her junior season on
the swim team was beneficial
(she again was an All-
American), Goldstein found
she wasn't having as much
fun as she did with the swim-
mers at West Bloomfield.
"All in all, going to Mercy
was a good experience. It was
something I wanted to do,"
Goldstein said.
But she also wanted to go
back to West Bloomfield for
her senior year, so she trans-
ferred again. Lakers girls
swimming coach Bob Crosby,
who just completed his 12th
season at the helm, said Gold-
stein's teammates welcomed
her.
As the season progressed,
the girls on the West Bloom-
field squad grew closer and
closer. Goldstein soon realiz-
ed she was back home.
"It was weird in the begin-
ning because there were so
many girls I didn't know, but
our team became like one big

family," she said. "We were
always together. It seemed
like we lived at the pool.
There were about 40 girls on
the team and we shared a
locker room which had only
two plugs for hair dryers, so
we had to get along.
"My best friends were on
the team. Besides practices
and meets, we did a lot of
things together. We went out
for breakfast, we went to
movies, we even visited Hallo-
ween haunted houses."
All that togetherness pleas-
ed Crosby.
"I'm so happy Linda finish-
ed her high school career on
such a positive note," he said.
"As a coach, it was a blessing
to have someone like Linda to
put into my lineup each meet.
"The other girls on the
team really liked Linda,
especially the younger ones,
because she has such a great
attitude and sets such a good
example for them."
Crosby said Goldstein is a
perfect role model because
she combines her natural
swimming talent with hard
work, determination, and in-
tense competitiveness.

Linda Goldstein
has switched
schools, but
hasn't skipped a
beat.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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