Roy Fagin knows you can lead a kid to water, but you can’t make him swim. Particularly in the city schools.

Fagin just tried to start up a swim program at Coolidge Senior High School. He failed.

He loves swimming, and he loves Coolidge, from which he graduated in 1972. He knows apathy toward water sports is nothing new at the Brightwood school.

“I was the only swimmer at Coolidge when I was there,” says Fagin, now 57. “I would have been a one-man team, but because I was the only swimmer, I had to swim for Cardozo. They had a swim team.”

During his long career with the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, he’s tried to reverse the tide. In 1985, he was involved in the founding of the D.C. Wave, the DPR-sponsored swim team out of what’s now the William H. Rumsey Aquatic Center, serving as part of the squad’s first coaching staff. A year later, DPR started the annual Black History Invitational Swim Meet to expose local kids to minority swimmers from across the country. I spoke with Fagin about his attempt to start a Coolidge team and the state of the sport in D.C. at this year’s Invitational, held over the weekend at the Takoma Aquatic Center, a state-of-the-art pool located just a few breast strokes from the Coolidge campus. Fagin was there to take part in a 25-year reunion of the first D.C. Wave team, whose members were honored during the opening ceremonies of the swim meet.... Continued