Keith Cawthon Converse (“Casey”) was born to Dorothy Peterson and Edward Converse in Topeka, Kansas, on September 12, 1957. Casey was the youngest of four and the only boy. A rascal from day one, he spent his childhood adventuring with his dog Bones while pretending to be Francis Marion the Swamp Fox of the Revolution in the woods behind his house in Mobile, Alabama, and combing the white sand beaches of Gulf Shores for treasure and bottle caps to exchange for soda and candy. It was in the rolling surf of the Gulf that he learned the basics of freestyle, and then the Mobile Country Club pool where he started to put those lessons to the test.
After some practice, Casey started to show promise as a distance freestyler. He started winning races and soon needed a new challenge, so he moved to the opposite side of the country to swim with the Mission Viejo Nadadores and became a part of a legendary team of 1970s swimmers. In Mission Viejo, Casey swam in the “Animal Lane” with his soon to be Olympic teammates. He qualified for the US Olympic Trials and made the US Olympic Team in an epic second-half comeback sprint in the 400m freestyle that has been named one of Swimming World’s “Great Races.” After competing in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Casey went on to swim for the University of Alabama. There, he was an NCAA National Champion, broke the American Record in the 1000-yard freestyle, and was the first man to break the 15 minute barrier in the 1650-yard freestyle.
Casey finished his education studying elementary education at Washburn University in Topeka. It was in Topeka that he started working as a youth club coach, a decision that would define the rest of his professional career. Shortly after graduating, Casey moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to be an assistant coach for the Cincinnati Pepsi Marlins. He worked as an age group coach for a few years before moving into his first job as a collegiate head coach for New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In 1988, Casey and his family moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he took a job as one of the first civilian head coaches for the United States Air Force Academy. Although he was hired to coach both the men’s and women’s teams, the Air Force Academy was using women’s sports as a way to increase the number of women at the Academy, so they asked him to put special care into building that team. When the teams both moved to the Division I level, he decided to focus his energy on the women’s team.
During his 29-year coaching career at Air Force, Casey not only built the program, but also became the winningest swim coach in Air Force history. Before retiring in 2017 he coached 32 different athletes to 178 first-team All American honors, six athletes to 13 national titles, four relay teams to national titles, one relay team to a NCAA Division II national record, and twelve swimmers to conference titles (10 in the WAC and 2 in the MWC). Many of his Cadet athletes also received academic all-conference honors for excelling in the classroom as well as in the water.
Casey knew how to build workouts to help his athletes see success in the pool; however, his influence was much greater outside the pool. Many athletes considered Casey their surrogate family as they navigated the rigors of college athletics and the Air Force Academy. In Casey, they found a coach who celebrated them individually no matter how small the accomplishment, and someone who genuinely cared about their needs, their successes, their struggles, and their joy. He met his team where they were and was intentional about his time with them. He played games on the pool deck when the stress of the Academy was overwhelming, built team dynamics of hard work and connection, created silly competitions to keep everyone’s spirits up as they traveled for meets, and loved each athlete like they were his own daughters and sons. This love was formally recognized when he was inducted into the Air Force Athletics Hall of Fame in 2022, named one of the Collegiate Swimming and Diving Coaches Association’s top 100 coaches in 100 years, and received the 2017 Richard E. Steadman Award for coaches who have spread happiness in the sport of swimming and diving. These awards, and the love from former swimmers and colleagues, meant more to him than any of his individual accolades or accomplishments.
It was his time coaching and his unwavering support of women’s athletics, that led Casey to write and publish his first book covering what he believed to be the most underrated events in swimming and sports in general. He spent years researching and interviewing his female teammates from the 1976 Olympic Team about their struggles to win against an East German team that was being systematically doped without their knowledge. Casey told the story of “The Great Race” in his 2016 book Munich to Montreal: Women’s Swimming in a Tarnished Golden Era, covering everything from the changes in swimming equipment in that era to the incredible accomplishments of his female teammates in a time prior to Title IX protections for women’s sports.
Casey retired from coaching after 31 years at the collegiate level. In retirement he returned to his love of adventuring, mapping the reef right off the shore of his favorite beach in Maui, camping, fishing, Keith Urban concerts, and big family trips. In true Casey fashion, his life was spent bringing people together: teams, relays, friends for dinner parties and Bible studies, fishing groups, and most importantly his family no matter how far apart they spread. Even in his last moments, Casey used his energy to make sure he was surrounded by his loved ones and that they would continue to spend quality time together in his absence. He is survived by his wife, Andrea; daughters, Maggie and Rosie; grandchildren, Jace, Manolo, Kellen, and Eloise; sisters, Brandly, Lily, and Dorie; brothers, Pat, Robbie, and Mark McFarland; and first wife, Sherry. Casey was preceded in death by his saintly mother, Dorothy; his father, Ed; and his beloved Irish setter, Callie.
A celebration of life will be held at Shove Chapel at Colorado College in Colorado Springs on Friday, September 20, at 12:30pm with a reception to follow at Kinship Landing. Efforts will be made to stream the service from Casey’s Facebook Account.
Casey would like to be surrounded by “outrageous” flowers, but in lieu of flowers a donation can be made to the University of Alabama Swimming and Diving scholarship in his name at https://bit.ly/CaseyConverse
Partager l'avis de décèsPARTAGER
v.1.11.6