| Union City alum Mary Vowell making a splash as medalist | By: By KENNETH COKER, Messenger Sports Reporter
| Posted: Friday, July 8, 2011 9:06 pm
| 
Mary Vowell shows off her National Senior Games medals from this year. | | | Move over Betty White, Union City High School product Mary Vowell is literally a (Gold)en girl.
And a silver girl and a bronze girl, too, for that matter.
The 85-year-old grandmother claimed six swimming medals (one gold, one silver and four bronze) recently at this year’s National Senior Games in Houston.
“It’s exciting to compete,” Vowell — the daughter of the late Union Citians W.C. and Mary Byrd Kelly — told The Messenger. “It’s even more fun to compete when you’re winning.”
Vowell’s 2011 gold medal came in the 50-yard breaststroke, where she logged a time of 58.99.
It was Vowell’s first event of that day and she told that she went for broke.
“The day before, I had three events one after another and was tired out,” Vowell said. “I had rested for the 50-yard and I went as hard as I could.”
Vowell’s winning time was four seconds less than that of what she qualified with at the district level and half a second better than second-place Beatrice Jones (59.49).
All totaled, Vowell — a 1943 graduate of UCHS — now has 11 medals from her seven trips to the senior games.
Not too shabby for someone that returned to the pool for medical reasons.
“I always loved swimming,” said Vowell, who played basketball in the late 1930s and early 1940s at Union City High School. “We did it a lot when I was growing up and even when I had kids, I’d take them to the pool.”
However, it wasn’t until she began to have swelling in her feet and ankles that she returned to the pool full-time.
“The No. 1 reason I swim is because my doctor told me I had a choice to make,” said Vowell, who practices regimens prepared by UT Martin international programs instructor Frank Leach — a former member of the Indiana University swim team — at the Elam Center’s pool. “My feet and ankles were swelling and the doctor said I needed to either prop them up an hour a day, start walking or wear elastic hose to make the swelling go down.
“I started swimming and after a little while realized my feet and ankles weren’t swelling. I’ve been doing it every since.”
From there, Vowell — a 1945 graduate of University of Tennessee Junior College (the future UTM) — was encouraged to take part in the state Senior Games by friend and former Weakley County educator Louise Murphy.
“Louise asked me why I didn’t take part in the Senior Games and I said because I can’t swim fast,” Vowell said. “But she kept on insisting, saying they needed someone from northwest Tennessee to enter, so I went to state in Clarksville.
“It was exciting and I won a bronze medal up there and I’ve been going every since. It was like we’d beaten Dixie when I was in high school”
With that first bronze medal, Vowell qualified for her first-ever National Senior Games.
While among the elite senior athletes of the nation for the first time in Orlando, Fla., Vowell was relieved to just fit in.
“The first time I went (to nationals), I was grateful to finish well enough to get a ribbon in the middle of the pack,” Vowell said.
A dozen years later and Vowell is still going strong, bringing home a wagon of accolades from the latest National Senior Games in the age 85-89 division.
In addition to the gold medal this year, Vowell claimed a silver in the 100-yard freestyle race.
Her bronze medals came in the 100-yard intermediate, 200-yard breaststroke, 100-yard breaststroke and 50-yard breaststroke.
And the spry grandmother of nine doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.
“The longer I go, the more I’ll win and I plan on being in Cleveland in 2013 and Minneapolis in 2015,” joked Vowell, who noted that longevity runs in her family as her brother is 87 and her grandmother lived to be 90 as did her great-grandfather — 92 to be exact.
Sports reporter Kenneth Coker can be contacted by e-mail at kcoker@ucmessenger.com. | | | | |
