OCEAN CITY — A trio of 20-year-olds set the pace for Saturday’s T. John Carey Masters Swim in Ocean City, covering the one-mile ocean course in less than 20 minutes, but the race wasn’t just a race and it wasn’t just for the young.
Of the more than 100 people who officially entered, running into the surf at the Sixth Street beach and swimming to the finish on the beach at 14th Street, there were people of all ages with one singular ability — being able to swim for a mile.
While there were plenty of teenagers as young as 13 (and a few as young as 11 and 12), there were others in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s who completed the course.
For the record, Patrick Casey was the first swimmer to reach the finish, going stroke for stroke with Rhett Cosgrove along the course and into the beach. He got up out of the surf first and beat Cosgrove to the finish by two seconds, finishing in 19 minutes, 26 seconds. Both are from Bryn Mawr, Pa.
Lydia Palmer of Marlton was the first female finisher, swimming with the two young men, but trailing them slightly. She finished in a time of 19:39.
Rounding out the top 10 finishers were Logan Manning, age 15, 20:02, fourth; Charles Kline, 17, 20:44, fifth; Paul Brooks, 21, 20:54, sixth; Frankie Brady, 28, 20:57, seventh; William Jenkins, 15, 20:59, eighth; Dylan Dewitt, 18, 21:19, ninth; and Nina Wysocki, 15, 21:46, 10th (second female). Full results at my.raceresult.com.
A trio of veteran T. John Carey swimmers, with a cumulative age of 218 years, were kidding around before the race.
Doug Frohock has completed the swim 30 times. The 73-year old said he keeps coming back for the camaraderie and to swim against Ron Marks, the fresh-faced kid of the bunch at 65, and George Thieler, one of the oldest competitors at 80.
The three of them noted they’re all in the same age group — 65 to 99.
Thieler joked that he didn’t know if the mile ocean swim “was keeping me alive or is killing me at this age.”
Seriously, he noted, “I like to do this because I like to let other people see you can do this at 80 or older. I remember when I was 20 years younger, I saw some older guys doing it — I don’t know how old they were — but I thought that’s great. I hope I can do that when I’m that age. And now I’m there … somewhere around there.”
“And he’s still fast,” Frohock said of Thieler. “I’m half fast.”
“I’ve done this at least 40 times,” Marks said. “I was on the Ocean City Beach Patrol so you have to do it. I enjoy it.”
Marks noted the race aspect wasn’t really fair since he was younger than his compatriots because performance curves downward as the age curve rises upward.
The two older gentlemen agreed Marks had the advantage: “They say age is only in your mind. That’s crap. Age is in the calendar and it shows. They say it’s only in your mind, except for the part that’s in your shoulders.”
Marks finished in 22:39. Thieler clocked in at 32:25 and Frohock at 33:47.
The oldest competitor, Charles Butler, 82, finished in 51 minutes and 54 seconds, but there were plenty of swimmers younger than Marks who finished after the three men.
Other former beach patrol members also were taking part.
Samantha Vanderslice, a former Ocean City Beach Patrol guard, said she was there for the race because it was a beautiful night.
“I wanted to come out and support the beach patrol and have fun,” she said.
Vanderslice, 30, was on the OCBP for 10 years. Her children were waiting for her at the finish line. Her 4-year-old, Henry, asked if he could do the swim with her. “I said maybe in a few years,” Vanderslice said.
She joked that she could have strapped her 1-year-old, Ruby, to her back.
Vanderslice was with another former OCBP guard, Jackalyn Pawling, 27, who used to row competitively for the beach patrol.
Pawling said she was switching things up with the swim. She was doing the swim “to support the beach patrol and also they say ‘guards for life,’ so I wanted to come with my friend Sam and do it together. We talked about it a couple of weeks ago. We’re going to give it a go.”
Asked if she had been swimming regularly to prepare, she laughed. “No, I have not, but we’ll see how it goes. I went surfing one time. Sam was always a better swimmer so I’m going to follow her and hang on.”
She finished in a respectable 30:12; Vanderslice was about a minute ahead of her in 29:02.
“We live here, so that makes it easy,” Susan Reich, 65, said about coming out for the mile swim again and again. “It’s a tradition. It’s fun to swim in the ocean.”
She enjoys the competitions “and seeing the friends who come out that you don’t see all the time.”
Frankie Brady, 28, said, like Reich, he would keep coming back even if he moved away from Ocean City. For now, he’s able to ride his bike because he lives close by.
“We’ve been swimming in the bay and it’s always fun to see where you’re at. These races are a good way to do that,” he said. Although he’s a former OCBP guard, he said, “The trick is, you never formally retire so if you ever want to come back and do part-time, it’s like, ‘I’m back!’”
Brady noted he’s never won the race but has come in second and third. “Maybe one of these years,” he said. Reich noted Brady is swimming well this year.
Although it wasn’t Brady’s year to win, he finished seventh in a time of 20:57, not too far off the pace of the winners.
Twin sisters Julie Marzano and Emily McCarthy, who have summered in Ocean City for 12 years, were convinced to participate by their cousin, Lauren Lasher.
“I pressured them into it,” Lasher said, laughing. It didn’t take much pressure. “I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this race.’ They were like, ‘OK, I’m in.’”
This was the first time for all three of them and they might do it again if the conditions are just as nice — warm water, flat seas.
The three of them noted they didn’t rush in, instead opting to just walk into the surf at the start “casually with a lot of other people because once all those fast people went it was easy to get in.”
“We made a pact that it wasn’t a race, that it was a challenge. We were here to challenge ourselves,” Marzano said.
Lasher was the fastest of the three.
“I lost them so fast,” she said. “I passed somebody and turned around and the white (swim) caps were gone. I was like, I can’t stop, I have to keep going.”
McCarthy said before the race “it was terrifying, but once we got in it was fine.”
The twins said they became more comfortable as the race went on. “None of us were ocean swimmers,” McCarthy said. All three said they felt good in the water because the lifeguards were with them the whole way.
The OCBP had guards on paddleboards following the swimmers, in a lifeboat and on jet skis to ensure everyone was safe, no matter their speed.
“It was so nice. They were cheering for you out there,” they said.
The trio added that after 10 or 12 summers, they kept seeing the race and kept saying they wanted to do it, and finally decided this was the year. They were happy the race was postponed from the early July date because the water was too cold. That allowed them a few weeks to train.
They added a whole crew of family members turned up at the finish line to cheer them on. And, they said, they set an example that if “the old ladies could do it,” their kids could too.
