A Harlem Coach Helps Seniors Stay Strong Through Synchronized Swimming

Oliver Footé, coach and choreographer of the Harlem Honeys and Bears, has been training senior swimmers for over 20 years.

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By Cristina Baussan

The first time eight-year-old Oliver Footé was about to dive into a pool, he feared the deep water. He froze on the diving board, preparing to leap, afraid he would drown. Ten minutes later, persuaded by his increasingly impatient coach, he jumped.

“It’s a really good feeling to do your first lap in a swimming pool,” says Footé, now 68. “My goal was to swim to the other end and I did it.”

That moment led to a lifelong relationship with the sport, first as a sponsored swimmer for the YMCA, then as a competitive swimmer and later as a Coney Island lifeguard. Now, Footé coaches the Harlem Honeys and Bears, an African-American senior swim team that began in 1979.

Coach Footé outside the Hansborough Recreation Center in Harlem.

Three times a week, he meets his 24 swimmers at Harlem’s Hansborough Recreation Center to practice their routines. Before class, he pumps jazz tunes through the facility’s sound system, but when the team is training for a competition, Barry White is his go-to artist. “It puts them in some sort of rhythm,” Footé says.

His oldest swimmer, Lettice Graham, was an Olympic athlete in her 60s. At 96, Graham now swims on her own, then watches her teammates perform from the edge of the pool, helping Footé take attendance. The pain in her hip has intensified.

“Once upon a time, I felt more relaxed when swimming,” Graham says. “But now exercise is no longer for fun. It’s for necessity.”

On a Monday morning, the Honeys and Bears ease into the pool at 10 a.m.. Footé, wearing a very red swim cap and a tight wetsuit, assigns the first exercise: Two laps in backstroke, a total of 50 yards.

“I’m tired,” one team member complains mid-lap.

“That’s O.K., keep going. You’ll get there,” Footé replies. “A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.”

“Come in the water and say that,” the student jokes. Footé assigns her an extra lap.

Although known for being demanding, Footé understands his swimmers’ health limitations. Many arrive for practice in wheelchairs or with walkers and canes. One is still recovering from a recent knee replacement.

“But once they get into the water,” Footé says, “it’s another life all together.”

On days when their fatigue surpasses their ability to perform, Footé gets frustrated. “That was terrible, with a capital T,” he tells the team after an insufficiently synchronized toe-touch. The seniors swim back to the pool’s edge and prepare to repeat the movement. 

“Good, better, best, never let it rest until the good is the better and the better is the best,” Footé chants, invoking the team motto. 

Graham, however, has never felt intimated by Footé’s loud comments. “I think he should be more strict with us,” she says. “Sometimes we take advantage of the fact that he respects our age.”

Lettice Graham, 96

Footé, who also coaches younger swimmers, choreographs each routine, finding inspiration in ordinary moments: People running up the street, kids splashing under open fire-hydrants. He also watches “Dancing with the Stars,” jotting down his favorite moves.

But beyond his fascination with synchronized swimming, Footé thinks everyone should swim, “because you never know when you may need that experience. It’s a life-saver,” he says.

In the United States, 10 people drown each day and drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional death for children under 14, according to the USA Swimming Foundation.

As a child, Aaron Mitchell, the team’s youngest member at 62, was afraid of the water. Footé, he says, has helped him overcome his angst.

“That man got me doing things I never thought I could do,” says Mitchell, a recently retired transit worker. “It makes me feel young again, diving, playing in the deep end of the water.”

Towards the end of practice, Footé assigns a dive. Each member decides on the exercise’s difficulty: The more advanced climb onto the aluminum boards hanging five feet above water; the intermediate swimmers gather along the pool’s edge to jump from a less frightening height. Newcomers like Mitchell prepare to dive from the pool’s steps.

Coach Footé during practice with the Harlem Honeys and Bears.

“Belly whop!” Footé yells from across the pool. “That’s a belly whop, Jane!”

The seniors encourage one another, laughing at their mistakes and vowing to improve. Mitchell has found that Harlem Honeys and Bears brings purpose to his life. He appreciates the support of older team members.

“When you retire, you have to be part of something,” he says. “If not, you’re going to waste away.”

Footé wants to help his senior swimmers feel free, capable, and at ease. Every year, he takes them to a dozen synchronized swimming events and competitions across the state. The team is ranked #1 in synchronized swimming among all five boroughs. He thinks swimming helps clear the mind and promotes a healthier life – and many of his aging swimmers agree.

“We come from water,” Mitchell says. “And it’s best to go back to it, before we go back to dirt.”

(Photos by Cristina Baussan.)

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