Six years ago an 11-year-old girl named Joanne
Scarborough went swimming
in the the outdoor pool at Butzel Field.
Today she is one of the finest all around swimmers in
Detroit.
Later this month, Miss Scarborough, now a senior at
Cooley High, hopes
to make a name for herself in the national AAU championships in
Bartlesville,
Okla.
LAVALIERE OF SWIMMING MEDALS-This
is only part of the
collection of swimming medals won by Joanne Scarborough during the six
years she has been racing and winning. The Cooley High senior, who
competes
for the Patton Tiger Sharks, has become the top all-around girl swimmer
in Detroit and Michigan and will compete in the National AAU
championships
at Bartlesville, Okla., April 14-16. The lavaliere that frames her
pretty
face is much too heavy to wear but the chain makes a convenient way of
handling her tokens of swimming glory. She swims all strokes-and well-
and it is not unusual for her to win as many as a half dozen medals in
one swimming meet as she did last weekend when she also set five state
records in an AAU regional meet.-News Photos by Gary Cooperman. |
In two years, she hopes to be good enough to swim for
the U.S. in the
Olympic Games in Mexico City.
Joanne, now 17, doesn't say much about her progress,
but her mother,
and biggest booster, Mrs. Jane Scarborough, does.
Mrs. Scarborough likes to recall the time her daughter
started competitive
swimming in 1960.
"Her first swimming coach was Joan Kintzing," her
mother said, "She
got Joanne interested in the Recreation Department's summer
program.
"I'll never forget the first trophy Joanne won. It was
for a breaststroke
race sponsored by the Kiwanis at Butzel. Since then, I have lost track.
I counted the trophies until her father got a cabinet for them. Now
Joanne
keeps adding trophies and medals almost every weekend. "Last Sunday she
came home from Akron with six more medals.
"In Akron, Joanne set three Michigan records in the
15-17-year-old girl's
class while competing in the AAU regional meet. She was clocked in
2:23.1
in the 200-yard butterfly, 5:03.1 in the 400-yard individual medley and
5:49.2 in the 500-yard freestyle.
Joanne did the 200-yard breaststroke in 2:32.4, but
finished second
to her friend, Cynthia Goyette, who did 2:31.6. Cynthia, an Olympic
gold
medalist from Detroit, lost to Joanne in the 200-meter breaststroke in
an AAU invitational at Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, last summer. She hit
2:53.5
to Cynthia's 2:54.8.
Miss Scarborough made the cutoff level for four events
in the national
AAU meet, April 15-17. She was 11.9 seconds faster than the 5:15
required
for the 400 individual medley, 9.6 seconds below the 200 breaststroke
level
of 2:42, 3.9 seconds faster than the 1:14 for the 100 breaststroke
minimum
requirement and 6-10ths of a second better for the 200 butterfly.
Joanne, while two years younger, is considered a more
versatile swimmer
than Cynthia.
Miss Goyette, now a Wayne State sophomore, specializes
in the breaststroke,
while Joanne competes in the breaststroke, individual medley
(butterfly,
backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle) and freestyle.
"Joanne also has plenty of stamina and fortitude,"
says her present
coach, Tom Sullivan, who guides the Patton Tiger Sharks. "She is easy
to
coach. She's a little shy of power, but she never stops practicing and
trying to improve on her form."
Joanne has set 19 Michigan records in the past year.
Last spring she
set two junior national records, doing 5:12 in the 400 individual
medley
and 2:39 in the 200 breaststroke. She also set an American record when
she did 2:42.9 in the 200 breaststroke over a long course.
Three years ago, the 5-foot-2, 112-pound Cooley coed
won the three-mile
marathon at Lake Wyoga in Ohio and last spring she covered 1,650 yards
in 20 minutes, 8 seconds.
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In a state Junior Olympic championship meet last
year at Birmingham
Seaholm High, Joanne set a record of 2:38.5 for the 200 breaststroke
and
a mark of 5:10.2 in the 400 individual medley.
In November, she set five records in a Hall of Fame
meet at Fitzgerald
High and in January she led an American team to victory in an
international
event in London, Ont., by setting a meet record of 2:35.5 in the
women's
200 breaststroke.
These are the highlights of her career, but there
appears to be more
records and trophies on the horizon.
JOANNE OFF IN MEDLEY AS
BACKSTROKER
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WINNING TAKES
HOURS OF PRACTICE
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NO END IN SIGHT FOR
TROPHY COLLECTION
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