Darr remembered as coaching legend

DANA POINT - Bruce Furniss vividly remembers one of his first workouts in Coach Flip Darr’s legendary training group about 40 years ago.

Probably 12, Furniss was in traditionally-slow Lane 8 while training with the old Huntington Beach Aquatics club.

During one of the sets, Darr didn’t believe Furniss’ time and challenged the youngster to a “get-out swim.” (If the up-and-comer met a standard in the 400-meter freestyle, the group could leave practice early).

The catch: Furniss had to shave 10 to 15 seconds from his best time.

“He stops the workout,” Furniss recalled of Darr. “In the pool at the time is Gary Hall (Sr.) — probably the most famous U.S. Olympic swimmer at the time.

“My brother, Steve. My brother, Chip. Shirley Babashoff. Jack Babashoff. And I’m just a low-ranking age-group swimmer who doesn’t even deserve to be here.”

With Hall waving a towel in support, Furniss foreshadowed his Olympic future by reaching the standard.

“I swim out of my head,” said Furniss, a two-time gold medalist at the 1976 Olympics. “He (Darr) said, ‘That’s so good, you don’t have to come back for a month.’”

With a new-found confidence, Furniss attended Darr’s next workout.

And so goes another story about the hall of fame coach, who died last month at the age of 74.

Many other memories of Darr were shared Sunday night at his memorial at Doheny State Beach. The casual but heart-felt tribute attracted close to 300, including Darr’s county Olympians Bruce and Steve Furniss (Foothill), Hall (Rancho Alamitos) and John Mykkanen (El Dorado).

Hall traveled from his home in Florida. He recalled how Darr restored his Olympic dream while the two were at Rancho Alamitos.

Distraught over a failed transfer attempt to Anaheim to swim for then-coach Jon Urbanchek, Hall’s outlook changed when he met his new coach before his sophomore season.

“I said, ‘Hi. I’m Gary Hall' and he goes, ‘I know who you are,’” Hall recalled. “You’d think he’d say ‘Hi.’ … He looked at me and said, ‘Do you want to make the Olympics?’”

Hall answered yes. Darr then handed him a kickboard. On the board, Darr had written times for Hall in four events: 200 and 400 individual medley, 200 butterfly and 200 backstroke.

“First of all, I said, ‘Flip, I don’t swim the IM,’” Hall said. “He said, ‘Well, Do you want to make the Olympic team?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘You’re going to learn how to swim the IM.’“

Hall kicked toward the challenging times and within two years he had won a silver medal at the 1968 Mexico City Games in the 400 individual medley.

“He was the guy who enabled me and many (others) … to fulfill their dreams,” said Hall, a three-time Olympian. “One of the greatest swim coaches the world has ever known.”

In 2006, Darr was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

He coached several county teams, including Saddleback College for 26 years, but also was known for his innovations.

He is credited with being the first to have swimmers use hand paddles in practice. His first versions were crafted of aluminum and led to many accidential cuts in practice.

Darr later switched to a plastic version of the paddles. He also used surgerical tubes for resistance training.

He also was remembered Sunday for his sarcastic wit and his love for telling stories like the one of Bruce Furniss.

“If he latched one story about you,” Bruce said, “That was how you were defined.”

On Sunday, Flip Darr was defined as a legend.

He also utilized surgical tubes for resistance training.

Contact the writer: dalbano@ocregister.com