By Mike Kays
When Kenneth Treadway makes a Olympic swimming prediction, people should listen.
Not necessarily because of his 78 years of wisdom, though give that due credit too. Listen because Treadway has impacted swimming, and the best swimmers, dating back to the middle of the last century.
After coaching the Bartlesville YMCA for several seasons, Treadway, a 1947 Muskogee Central graduate, organized the Phillips 66 Splash Club, now in its 58th year of operation. His influence was instrumental to Phillips Petroleum Company becoming a national sponsor of swimming and diving in the 1970s.
That, and some innovations in training led to his selection to lead the U.S. Olympic men’s team at the 1964 games at Tokyo, the women at the 1968 games at Mexico City and the men again in 1972 at Munich, Germany. One of those on the ‘72 team happened to one Mark Spitz, who swam to a record seven gold medals that year after winning two golds in relay events at the 1968 games.
But back to the prediction: Is current sensation Michael Phelps destined to break Spitz’s 36-year-old record in Beijing this month?
Treadway’s take: Absolutely.
“No one will be more pleased with that than Mark himself,” Treadway said from his home in Overland Park, Kan. “I think Phelps will win five individual gold and three on the relays. And I’ll go further — I’ll go out on a limb and say the men’s team will win half the swim medals in the games and the women a third.”
Treadway himself had a hand in the foundation that’s led to such success. Not only did he coach Spitz through the highs — and the lows — of those 1972 games, before then, his “circle swimming” workout plans and serpentine heats in meets made both practice and competitions more efficient. He also helped establish qualifying standards used in determining who competes in Olympic trials.
Those highs were evident in the gold Spitz won. Those old enough to remember know about the lows, only perhaps not as intimately as Treadway and Spitz did.
The Palestinian militant group, Black September, seized 11 Israeli athletes as hostages during the early morning hours of Sept. 5, 1972. By the time the incident had ended, all 11 athletes were dead as well as a German police officer.
Treadway, a Army veteran who served during the Korean War, knew instantly what he was hearing just 200 meters away in the quarters of the Americans’ staff, a building which was separate from where the athletes were housed.
“Being military, you never forget the sound of machine gun fire and I knew that’s what woke me up,” he said. “I went room to room and told our staff to stay in the room and get low. From where we were, you could see masked terrorists on the balcony.”
Within hours of the first gunshots, Treadway recalls, Spitz had been whisked out of the building in secret by Olympics and U.S. officials and was on his way out of Germany. It was a strange twist to a familiar scene in those games — Treadway’s wife, Bettie, and daughter Tanya would leave the Munich Schwinnhalle each night to drive a van with Spitz crouched on the rear floorboard. Treadway would follow them in another van, and the media and fans would think Spitz was with him.
“The crowds following him were intense,” Treadway said. “When the terrorist attack occurred, that security was, you might say, raised a few levels.”
Not only were coaches and players separated, so were spouses. Bettie Treadway, who her husband met while the two attended Central High School (she was the former Bettie Mathews), had no idea her husband was safe until she heard an update on Armed Forces Radio in her Munich hotel, saying no Americans had been hurt in the terrorist attack.
Relieved but wanting no more of Munich or its Olympics, she sold her two tickets to the closing ceremonies and took an early flight to Copenhagen, Denmark. It was there two days later that Treadway was reunited with his family.
“A Bartlesville radio station had reached her at her hotel after the incident and she told them something that to me was a bit prophetic. She told them that we were going to have to deal with terrorists the rest of our lives. And she was right.”
It was a scene far more complicated than those simple days back at the family’s farming home off Coody Creek, where his dad damned up a part of the creek for Treadway’s first experience with swimming.
“My brothers would always have a contest to see who was the first in the water and I always won,” he said. “But they planned it that way because the first one to hit the water would chase away the snakes and turtles.”
Two of those brothers, Olen and Faye Treadway, starred in football at Muskogee Central and went on to play college ball, Olen at Iowa and Faye at Abilene Christian. Olen lives in Edmond, Faye is deceased. He has two other brothers, Jim of Muskogee and Edward of Henryetta, and a sister, Vivian, living in Clarksville, Ark.
In July, Kenneth Treadway received the Presidents Award for lifetime achievement by the International Swimming Hall of Fame during the Olympic Trials in Omaha, Neb. While he had plenty of positive impact on the sport and the games, what he sees today bothers him somewhat.
“From 1964 on, each year the politics and commercialization of the games increased,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a good thing. The money involved has brought on the pressure to excel. You have trainers who want to give their athletes every edge. In the beginning, it was simply about finding the greatest athletes in the world. I wish it were more like that today.”
Treadway and his wife won’t be going to Beijing.
“We had the opportunity but at our age, we don’t want to fight the crowds,” he said.
File: Kenneth TreadwayAssistant Manager Men's Olympic Team: 1964;
Manager Women's Olympic Team: 1968;
Manager Men's Olympic Team: 1972;
Chairman National Women's Swimming Committee: 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968;
Chairman National Men's Swimming Committee: 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972;
AAU Men's Swimming Committee: 1968;
Coach of the 5th Army Swim Team: 1953;
Coach: 1954 Phillips 66 Splash Club, 1950 YMCA Bartlesville, Bartlesville High School (1958-1950) Oklahoma High School Champions;
U.S. Aquatic Sports Award: 1972.
