When Last is First

In all my years of coaching, one swimmer stands out as the worst swimmer I have
ever coached. When Ziggy showed up for the first practice of the season, he was
a short, thick necked, square shouldered, solid teenager of fourteen years old.
Dark hair, dark eyes, dark glasses, he sank like a stone in the water. I had to let
Ziggy swim in the lane closest to the wall because he could not make it from one
end of the pool to the other without stopping to hold onto the side and catch his
breath and rest. Despite my best efforts he made little improvement in improving
his stroke and efficiency in the water. He just stunk. Even so, he was not easily
discouraged – he was the first swimmer to arrive at practice and the last to leave.
He acted as if he were dutybound. After six weeks of consistent attendance at
practice, I felt thrilled that he could at least make it for one or two laps without
touching the wall. Despite Ziggy’s minimal progress we were able to swim in our
last place relays that only demanded two laps.
Ziggy was a sort of invisible member of the team. He went unnoticed because he
was the slowest. He was the last to be picked for bonding exercises and games
before practice. He was withdrawn and quiet, sat by himself on the team bus on
the way to meets, but he actively cheered on his team mates as they competed.
As the season wore on, he became still more withdrawn, and I found out through
my athletic director that Ziggy’s parents were going through a divorce. Even
though he would never become a star swimmer, or barely proficient, swimming
every day was a good way for Ziggy to work out his emotions and frustrations
with his stressful family situation.
I looked for an opportunity to help this young man whose perseverance and stoic
attitude I admired. Towards the end of the season, we faced our crosstown rivals
in a critical meet for the division championship. I struggled to rearrange the
lineup so that we could be better positioned to win. I had one swimmer on the
team, Czeslaw, who could be put in any event and win it – he later became state
champion and then All American. I had to ask him to do the impossible - in order
to win the meet, he would have to compete in and win two of swimming’s most
difficult events in a row. The first event was the 500 yard freestyle, the longest,
most grueling race in high school swimming. Then right after that, he would have

to swim the 100 yard butterfly as the next event, also considered a very strenuous
event. I strained to think of a way my All American would be able to do both
without becoming completely exhausted. In a flash of unconventional thinking, I
figured out a way. I would ask Ziggy to do the impossible as well. He would swim
the 500 yard freestyle AS SLOWLY as he possibly could and come in last. The way I
envisioned it, Czeslaw would handily win the 500 freestyle, and Ziggy would buy
him time to rest his body before tackling the 100 yard butterfly. Ziggy’s job was
to take his sweet time finishing the event and come in dead last, giving Czeslaw
crucial rest and recovery time.
The day before the meet, I discussed my winning strategy with the entire team,
and everyone understood what needed to be done. The idea was enthusiastically
embraced by everyone on the team except Ziggy. He stood up with his head
hanging down and said he would not be physically able to swim that far. It was
too far, he was afraid of being humiliated. I told him victory and defeat rested on
his shoulders. I told him all he had to do was swim one lap at a time and never let
his feet touch the bottom of the pool. At the end of each lap, he could hold onto
the end of the pool as long as he needed to rest. He should think of this race as
twenty extremely slow one lap swims. If he refused, I would understand and not
hold it against him, but he would be letting the team down. Very reluctantly, he
agreed to give it his best shot. The dutybound part of Ziggy led him to accept the
challenge.
The next day the meet went according to plan. Czeslaw won the 500 yard
freestyle, and jumped out and rant to a makeshift towel bed the team managers
had prepared for him so that he could lay down and rest. Meanwhile, Ziggy
stoically and steadily followed our plan and swam one lap at a time, pausing at
the end of the pool to rest. His rest periods became longer and longer. All of the
other swimmers had finished the race and were out of the pool, and Ziggy still
had ten laps to go. I noticed a panicked look on his face, and I decided to meet
him at the end of his next lap to offer some words of encouragement. His head
popped out of the water, he looked up at me and said, “Coach, I can’t do it. I
have to stop.” I told him that stopping was not an option, to keep going. Off he
slowly, reluctantly swam towards the other end of the pool. I had plenty of time
to run down to the other end of the pool. And I motioned for some of my other
swimmers to join me in encouraging Ziggy. When next his head popped out of

the water, Ziggy saw not just me, but ten other swimmers encouraging him to
keep going. His rest at the end of the pool was shorter and his next lap was
faster! As the ten swimmers and I ran to get to the other end of the pool, we
were joined by the rest of the team. They were loud, enthusiastic and totally
committed to cheering for their team mate. Soon the other coach and members
of the opposing team joined us at the opposite end of the pool and met Ziggy
offering shouts of encouragement. Members of the audience came onto the deck
shouting to Ziggy to keep going. When Ziggy finished the race, there were more
than 100 people running back and forth on the deck yelling to him and
encouraging him to finish. He finished the race, exhausted, and his team mates
pulled him up out of the water and onto their shoulders. The crowd carried him
around the pool cheering and celebrating his triumph. We won the meet by one
point, as planned, and Ziggy was the hero that day.
Several years later, I received a letter on official government stationery from the
U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. In it was a picture of Ziggy in dress officer’s
uniform and a notification of his graduation from Annapolis with highest honors.
There was a short note to me saying, “Thank you, Coach, for teaching me that last
can be first.”
Utilization is a key component of Ericksonian therapy. Utilization is taking
something problematic for the client and turning it into a resource. One of the
simplest examples is when Erickson noted to delusional patient who believed he
was Jesus Christ that he must have learned some carpentry skills from his father,
Joseph, and he put him to work repairing furniture and making bookshelves. That
carpentry work led the client to give up his delusion and return to being a
productive member of society. In another case, Erickson instructed a woman who
thought she looked horribly disfigured because she had a gap between her two
front teeth. She thought no man would like her or find her attractive because of
this flaw. Erickson told her to use that gap to spit water at handsome men when
they gathered around the water cooler where she worked. She was horrified with
this advice and felt that it would antagonize her coworkers and get her fired.
Instead, as Erickson predicted, they found it amusing and competitive and they
began to try to see who among them could spit the water the farthest. One of
the men she worked with found her talent so interesting that after several dates,
he proposed to her.

By David J. Norton, LPC and Paula Norton, MA