When Bob Winslow was offered a math teaching and swim coaching contract for the 1973-74 school year at Belfast High School, the superintendent of schools told him to increase the roster size of the swim team or the program would be eliminated.
Now in his 52nd season, the Lions program continues to flourish under Winslow’s leadership. Belfast has amassed a .714 winning percentage based on 416 dual meet wins against 161 defeats and six ties. Since the inception of the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Swimming and Diving Championships in 1977-78, Belfast has won 18 KVAC titles.
Led by a coach who for more than half a century has consistently demons1trated his passion for coaching and his dedication to Belfast High swimming and diving, the Lions opened the 2024-25 dual meet season Friday with a 63-38 win against Mount Desert Island High.
Competing in the Maine Principals’ Association Invitational State Class B Swimming and Diving Championship, Winslow’s Lions have won three state titles and recorded five runner-up finishes. He has been awarded five Maine Interscholastic Swim League Coach of the Year honors and two Coach of the Year diving recognitions. Fifteen KVAC Coach of the Year honors have been awarded to Winslow, a member of the Waldo County YMCA Board of Directors for 21 years.
“My first season we had only six or seven swimmers,’’ said Winslow, a 2021 Maine Swimming and Diving Hall of Fame inductee. “Our first season, we went to Falmouth High for a dual meet and [Falmouth coach] Harvey Wheeler had more managers than we had swimmers.”
As a swimmer for Phil Lucas at Deering High of Portland and a four-year swimmer at Nichols College in Mass., Winslow had a foundation to begin his swim coaching career. He had no experience with diving.
“I recognized that if we were going to have a chance to be competitive with Old Town High in Class B, I had to develop a diving program. I attended clinics and had many conversations with Harvey [Wheeler] and Bobbi Stoyell.”
Wheeler developed outstanding divers at Falmouth as did Stoyell at Old Town.
He also purchased, read, and studied, “The Techniques of Springboard Diving,” published in 1968 and authored by national diving champion and former MIT diving coach Charlie Batterman.
Years later, when Winslow’s son Aaron raced for Keene State in the late 1990s, Batterman coached diving at Keene following his MIT retirement.
“I would sit with Charlie and Harvey (now the diving coach at Bowdoin) and listen to their conversations about diving. I learned so much about coaching and judging diving,” Winslow said.
Today, his briefcase is filled with coaching notes, practice plans, and meet results, as well as Batterman’s book. “It goes to practice with me every day,” said the coach of six MPA state championship divers and seven silver medalists.
Most seasons Winslow’s teams include swimmers with age group experience gained at the Waldo Y. While the experienced age group swimmers form the core of the team, the Lions attract aspiring swimmers and divers with no previous competitive experience. In fact, this season two-thirds of the roster includes first-year participants.
“It is so important to develop the younger team members and get them ready to compete and contribute at the end of the year. Every time we compete in a dual meet, we go to win. I love the competition, seeing the kids improve and what the team can do,” Winslow said.
Competition is what Winslow and the Lions thrive on.
“We have dual meet rivalries with some of the best teams in Class B like MDI, Ellsworth, and Morse. We close the dual meet season with Morse and the meet gets the team fired up for the KVAC and state championships. We see kids that step up. You want to be swimming fast at the end of the year,” he said.
During his coaching tenure, WInslow, who operated an underwater diving business for 35 years repairing buoy moorings off the mid coast, has adapted to changes in swimming and diving including start, stroke, and turn rule changes and the introduction of tech racing suits in the ‘90s and training and competition goggles in the ‘70s.
In recent years, he has altered his team’s training in response to the Maine Principals’ Association change in the format of the state championships. “When the state championships were trials and finals we trained a lot more sets of 200s and 300s [yards]. Now with the timed finals format, we swim shorter distance sets with more speed,” Winslow said.
Winslow acknowledges the support the Lions have received from the community and team alumni.
“We have had great support and our new athletic director [Susan Robbins] is awesome,” he said. The support contributed to a recent upgrade in pool equipment including the purchase of a timing system.
During the season when he is not near the pool, Winslow downhill skis. For 51 years, Winslow has been a member of the ski patrol in Camden. “It’s my stress reliever,” he said. In 2023, the National Ski Patrol awarded him the Lifetime Service Award.
