The Texas Swimming & Diving Hall of Fame has announced a five-member class of 2024. This is the 16th class to be inducted into the Hall of Fame housed at the University of Texas’ Lee & Joe Jamail Texas Swim Center. The Hall of Fame was established in 2008 via the vision of legendary coach Julian “Tex” Robertson to recognize the best swimmers and divers from across the state.
The 2024 Class of the Texas Swimming & Diving Hall of Fame:
- Nate Dusing
- Jean Henry
- Vicki Loock Veris
- Jim Stillson
- Lifetime Achievement Award – Emmett Hines
- Distinguished Team – Aggie Swim Club
The 2024 list includes an Olympic swimmer from Texas, Texas A&M’s first female All-American swimmer, a diving coach, and a diver from one of the state’s great aquatics families.
Nate Dusing
Dusing, 45, attended Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky where he set a National High School Record in the 100 fly – a mark that stood for more than a decade, until the 2009 supersuit era took it down.
After graduation, he went on to swim at the University of Texas where he won 11 NCAA titles and set the NCAA Record in the 200 yard IM as a senior in 2001.
Dusing represented the United States at the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics winning a pair of relay medals as a prelims swimmer: silver in 2000 and bronze in 2004. He also won four World Championship medals, including gold medals in 2004 and 2005, and six Pan Pacific Championships medals.
Dusing is now a senior regional manager at Medtronic, a massive medical device company.
Jean Henry
Henry grew up swimming with the Morris Swim Club in the Houston suburb of Pasadena, where she was an age group phenom in Texas. She won Texas Age Group Swimming titles, which span four LSCs, every year for seven consecutive years. She qualified for her first senior AAU Nationals when she was only 11 years old, and twice competed as part of a Texas All-Star Team against a group from Mexico. She was also part of the state’s first girls water polo team to compete at the national Junior Olympics.
An All-American her junior and senior years at Sam Rayburn High School, in 1968 she qualified for the US Olympic Trials and won the Lilian Kneip Award as Texas’ best female swimmer.
She was the first women’s swimming recruit to arrive at Texas A&M in 1970, a few years after first allowing women to enroll in 1963, when coach Pat Patterson was working on launching a women’s team. She would eventually become the first female All-American in Texas A&M history in the pre-NCAA era, earning honors in both her junior and senior years. She also competed on the Texas A&M men’s water polo “B” team, captained the school’s first volleyball team, and competed on the school’s first women’s track & field team, excelling in all four sports.
In 1974 she was named Texas A&M’s Outstanding Female Athlete.
Starting at age 11, she taught swimming at Bayshore Swim Club, launching competitive journeys for many young swimmers. She served over 25 years as ARC Lifeguard, Water Safety Instructor, and Kayak/Canoe Instructor, earning an ARC Community Heroes award. She was the first women’s swim coach for Southwest Texas State University, coaching several national qualifiers and an All-American in her three-year tenure. She served as Natatorium Director at North Lake Community College in Irving, Texas, managing a unique, multi-agency aquatic facility for the Community College, Irving School District, and Irving Dept. of Recreation, That facility advanced aquatics by hosting numerous swimming meets, water polo tournaments, triathlons, and recreational swim and SCUBA events. She has served 37 years with the YMCA, NAUI, and Scuba Educators as SCUBA Instructor, Instructor Trainer, and Course Director, among the first women to serve in these capacities, and is listed in Who’s Who in SCUBA. Jean is very proud that through the years she has taught countless people to swim, kayak, or SCUBA dive, endowing them with skills that enable a life-long healthy lifestyle.
After A&M, she went out to earn a master’s degree in sports administration and exercise physiology and in 1994 attended Texas Woman’s University where she earned a Ph.D. in Health Studies, specializing in Worksite Health Promotion. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Arkansas.
Vicki Loock Veris
Vicki Loock Veris straddles the worlds of both swimming and diving and is part of one of the state’s legendary sporting families. Her dad and coach, Carl Loock, is in the hall of fame, as are her brother Cal and sister Christine.
Loock Veris began swimming in 1948, and in 1963 she won the Lillie Kneip Trophy as the state’s Most Outstanding Female Swimmer. She is the only diver to ever win the award.
She won Texas Age Group diving titles at every age from 10 to open and was an 8-time Southwest AAU Diving Champion.
She was the head women’s swimming & diving coach from 1977-1982, the first woman to coach a Southwest Conference swimming team, where she led 21 athletes to 80 All-America awards. Her 1982 team finished 7th at the final AIAW Championships.
he served as Texas AIAW sports director for swimming, President-Elect of the National Collegiate Women’s Swim Coaches Association, and assisted with the transition from the AIAW to the NCAA as a governing body. Since her days at SMU, Vicki has spent a lifetime as an advocate for physical fitness as a Level 3 US Masters coach, champion triathlete, swimmer, mentor, mother, and grandmother. She lives in Lake Tahoe alongside her husband of 42 years, former World Class swimmer Andy Veris.
Jim Stillson
Jim Stillson, a diver, was a late-in-life arrival to the state of Texas. After a decorated All-America prep career at Campbell High in California, Stillson was an All-American on 3-meter in his senior year at Ohio State.
While he was a high-level athlete, his biggest impact on the sport came as a coach. In 33 seasons as the head diving coach at SMU, his divers earned 88 All-American honors, 10 US National Champions, four NCAA Champions, and four Olympians, including 1992 Olympic silver medalist and TSDHOF Inductee Scott Donie.
Stillson was the 1989 NCAA Men’s Diving Coach of the Year and the 1990 and 1995 NCAA Women’s Diving Coach of the Year. He was also a 15-time conference Diving Coach of the Year at SMU.
In 1999, the USOC named him its Diving Coach of the Year, and in 1992 U.S. Diving awarded him the Mike Malone Memorial Award, given for outstanding contributions to diving by the national governing body of the sport.
Stillson retired from SMU in 2017.
Emmett Hines (Lifetime Achievement Award)
Hines, who died in November 2016 at 60 years old, was a central figure in Masters Swimming, especially in the Houston area. He served for over 23 years on five different US Masters Swimming committees and in 1989 founded the H2Ouston Swim Team, which would eventually become the largest in the city with over 200 members.
He was named the USMS Coach of the Year in 1993 and in 2014 was given the Dorothy Donnelly Service Award. He also wrote several books about masters swimming.
Wally Pryor Distinguished Team Award: Aggie Swim Club
The Bryan/College Station community has a rich history in developing young swimmers. TSDHOF inductee and former A&M Coach Art Adamson taught swim lessons and club swimmers for many years. Texas A&M and the City of College Station Recreation Department hosted the first TAGS State Championship Meet, with Adamson as meet director. In the late 1960s, Pat Patterson was hired as Texas A&M’s head coach and volunteered for the College Station Swim Club. He was followed by Steve Montgomery, who coached the team until Mel Nash was hired as A&M’s head coach in 1980.
As the A&M college team began summer practices under Nash, four local high school swimmers asked if they could train with the team. After welcoming them and their four younger siblings, a wave of new kids joined, and the team took off. Under the guidance of Carol and Mel Nash, Aggie Swim Club was born as a new Gulf Swimming and USA Swimming Club. Over the next few years, AGS grew to over 100 swimmers under coaches Mike Shrader, now the head coach at San Diego State, followed by Rick Walker and Patrick Henry, Tracy Johnston, and Bill Miller. Current A&M men’s head Coach Jay Holmes helped coached the club while also serving as Mel’s assistant. Jay continues to be the club’s President today, and current A&M women’s head Coach Steve Bultman is the club’s current Director.
Because of the incredible growth under the previously mentioned coaches, AGS hired Bob Leland as a full-time coach in the late ‘80s. Leland was a former A&M swimmer who had been on the US National team in the 70s. In the 90s, Leland started College Station/Bryan Aquatics (CSBA), which operated out of the College Station community pools, while AGS continued to operate out of the A&M pools. In 1996, Leland hired Ryan Goodwyn, a former A&M swimmer to help grow the age group side of the program. Goodwyn, along with the AGS club president Bud Allen, facilitated a merger between AGS and CSBA in 2000, and the club doubled in size overnight. Goodwyn stayed on as the Age Group coach for AGS until 2017 while also coaching many AGS kids on the A&M Consolidated High School team until 2019.
When the new A&M Natatorium opened in 1995, Mel Nash continued to coach the Aggie Swim Club in the summers as well as the A&M men’s team and was an advisor to the year-round club until his departure in 2004. In 2004 the AGS men finished third at the USA Senior Nationals and combined with the women to finish second overall.
Over the years there have been many notable parents, volunteers and club Presidents such as Bob Randall, John Crompton, Debbie Bravenec, Linda Jones and Bud Allen. One of the most notable volunteers for the club was Bob Stallings, who was a USA Swimming official for the club as well as the club’s treasurer. Bob passed away after officiating at the Speedo Junior National Championships in Indianapolis in 2007.
In 2000 the club brought on Dr. Henry Clark, a research scientist in physics at A&M who was an Olympic Trials finalist in the 80’s. Henry became the head coach of the program as well as the club’s meet director, hosting large national level meets at the A&M Natatorium such as USA Sectionals for 20 years, Winter Junior Nationals and Futures. Henry has served on the Board of Gulf Swimming for nearly 20 years in various positions such as General Chair, Administrative Vice Chair, Senior Chair, Finance Vice Chair and Technical Planning Chair. Henry’s wife, Shannon, joined the club in 2002 as the club’s administrator and head age group coach and the pair together have grown the club to over 275 swimmers at two locations.
Portions of this article came from a press release courtesy the Texas Swimming & Diving Hall of Fame.
Congrats Nate!