Lifetime swimmer loves to teach others

AT 10 years old, Marie Adams and local identity Ingleby Morrison raced together from the Patea bridge to the beach ? and the younger woman's life has gone swimmingly ever since.
The two were the oldest and youngest in the regular bridge to beach race on the Patea River and entered the water at the same time. Marie Baker, nee Adams, was brought up in Patea and spent many happy hours at its beach and swimming pools. Her dad, Bob Adams, was a surfer and she doesn't even remember learning to swim.
In her time she was the only female member of Patea's surf club, making rescues amid waves that would frighten most. As an adult she went on to teach countless people to swim and to coach them to swim better.
She also taught artificial resuscitation and was known as "the mouth-to-mouth lady". She judged lifesaving, co-ordinated programmes and taught teachers how to teach children to swim.
On June 4 she was in Hamilton at a New Zealand Swimming Coaches and Teachers (NZSCAT) conference, because she always made an effort to keep up with the latest. She was stunned to be awarded a Nan Nevin Award at the conference dinner. She said she would also appear in the NZSCAT Hall of Fame, as a master teacher.
"I've basically had a lifetime of aquatics and swimming, and I do it because I love it."
She had taught babies and children, the disabled and the elderly, and said there were many memorable moments.
One was seeing an older primary school child overcome his fear and manage to swim a length of the school pool.
"He wouldn't let go of the side of the pool, so I got in with him, or if I couldn't be there he had a buddy at other times.
"The first time he swam down the pool I was so emotional. He got out of the water and said, 'I swam down the pool. I can swim', and he cried.
"The headmaster had come out and that set her off, and she set me off. "We were all blubbing."
Another buzz was a young man who was frightened of the water but managed to learn to swim before going to Fiji for a holiday. After he got back he wrote to her, saying she had opened up another world for him.
And then there was the 85-year-old woman who wanted to learn to swim before she died. She learned, and won a gold medal at the Masters' Games.
Mrs Baker was a competitive swimmer for Taranaki as a young woman. Then she trained as a school dental nurse and lived in Wellington while her three children were young. She got back into the water by helping out teachers of swimming at Wainuiomata Schools.
When she came to Wanganui in 1980, she got qualified and immersed herself again.
At one stage she was working full-time for the Splash Centre, and taught 62 swim classes a week until her health suffered.
For eight years she was the regional co-ordinator of the two-week annual Take the Plunge initiative, aimed at teaching swimming to people who had previously found it difficult. She had also taught more than 1000 teachers how to teach swimming.
The latest national push was to make sure 12-year-olds could swim 200m ? eight times the length of the Splash Centre and enough to ensure their survival in many situations.
"An awful lot of people don't like (swimming) and an awful lot of children out there can't swim," she said.
These days her work at the Wanganui pool was part-time, and she also did voluntary work such as coaching the SCG (Sports City Gonville) swimming club.
She had no plans to retire and was as keen as ever to keep up with the latest programmes and ideas.
"I have got a passion for teaching swimming and I enjoy it," she said.