SZVETITZ COLUMN: Quick left behind legacy of love, leadership to all who knew him

Rowdy Gaines doesn’t have any of the three gold medals he won during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

He gave them all away.

One to his mom, one to his dad and one to Richard Quick.

That’s how much the late Auburn University swimming coach meant to Gaines — and how much Quick still means more than a week after his death.

“I would not have been in the Olympic arena without his love and support,” Gaines said of Quick, who coached the Olympian at Auburn from 1978-81 and then three more years leading up to the ’84 Olympics. “There’s no way I could be the man I am today without Richard.”

Former Auburn head swimming coach David Marsh feels the same way. So does current head coach Brett Hawke. As does AU athletic director Jay Jacobs, and no doubt the countless athletes, coaches, friends and family Quick touched during his 66 years on this earth.

“He’s the most influential man in my life,” Marsh said. “Period.”

“He is the finest person I’ve ever known,” Jacobs said.

“He was everything to me,” said Gaines.

Quick died June 10, less than six months after he was diagnosed with an inoperable cancerous brain tumor. He was buried Friday in Austin, Texas. More than 40 athletes, coaches and administrators from Auburn attended Quick’s funeral, which was followed by a celebration of life.

He will be missed.

But never forgotten. Just ask anyone who knew him, talked to him, coached with him or swam for him.

Richard Quick was everything to a lot of people, but especially his family — June, his wife; his children, Michael, Kathy, Tiffany and Benjamin; and his grandchildren, Blake and Emily — whom he loved more than any of the 13 NCAA Championships he accumulated over his outstanding collegiate coaching career or any other accolade, award or honor on his mantle. Which, by the way, is bigger than Tiger Woods’.

And it’s that love — not the accomplishments — that will be missed and remembered most.

Sure, Quick has the most national championships of any collegiate swimming coach, ever, which sets him apart from the start. But it’s the way he lived his life — how he carried himself and treated others around him — that defines Richard Quick.

“If you look at what success is in the secular world of college athletics, there’s nobody in the swimming world more successful,” Jacobs said. “In order to achieve that, you’ve got to be an outstanding person. One with unquestionable character and integrity and ethics and hard work and positive attitude. He had all those things.

“It’s not a coincidence he was so successful.”

And that’s what Hawke says is the essence of who Richard Quick was.

“People recognize Richard as a great coach and a great person,” said Hawke, the man who filled in as Auburn’s co-head coach when Quick was diagnosed with the brain tumor and led the men to their eighth NCAA title this past March. “But he wasn’t a great person because he was a great coach. He was a great coach because he was a great person. The person made the coach.

“He was a great man, and that came first before coaching.”

But just to put in perspective how good Quick was during his 44 years on the pool deck, read on:

* Quick, who was first at Auburn as head coach from 1978-82, took over the Tiger program for a second time after the 2007 season, two years later he won his 13th NCAA title.

* He won seven NCAA titles at Stanford, including five in a row, then followed that with five at Texas as the head of the women’s swimming programs.

* Six times he was named the NCAA Coach of the Year, including this past season.

* He was head coach of the United States team at the 1988, 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games, and also served as an assistant at the 1984, 1992 and 2004 Olympics.

* He’s also a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

But according to the people who knew him the best, Quick’s list of accomplishments away from the pool is even more impressive. He was better at life, if that’s possible.

‘A better place’
“Richard made the world a better place every day,” said Marsh, who was a part of Quick’s first recruiting class at Auburn University in 1978. “There wasn’t a day that went by where people around him weren’t better, lifted up and challenged. I’ve never met a man like him, and probably never will.”

In or out of the pool, Quick made everyone better, Hawke said. A better swimmer, a better coach, a better person. Especially a better person.

“Richard had an ability to make people believe in the impossible,” Hawke said. “If you heard it from someone else, you’d laugh at them. But if you heard it from Richard, you’d sit and listen and actually believe.

“He would see things and believe in things before anyone else would see or believe in them.”

Quick believed as deep as anyone could, said both Jacobs and Marsh.

His belief in his swimmers is what made them better. His belief in his coaches is what propelled their careers. His belief in God is what he leaned on throughout his life, and even more so when he found out about the cancer that eventually took his life.

“The one thing he always stood on was his Christian foundation,” Jacobs said. “I called him on Dec. 26, a few days after he found out (about the brain tumor) and I asked him how he was doing. He said ‘I’m doing great. My salvation is secure.’

“He said, ‘I don’t know how people can go through anything like this or even every day without knowing their salvation is secure.’

“He said ‘We’re going to fight through this, but I’m in God’s hands.’”

Belief was the cornerstone of Quick’s life. His foundation as a Christian led him as a man, a husband, a father, a grandfather and a coach.

And it inspired others.

“When I swam under him, I wanted to be like him,” Marsh said. “As a coach, I wanted to coach like Richard. And now, when we had conversations about his Christian walk in his older years, I want to have the same Christian walk as he did.

“I want to model everything in my life after Richard.”

An ‘unbelievable’ legacy
Those close to him drew more than just spiritual strength from Quick. They also drank from the fountain of knowledge, experience and wisdom that seemed to pour out of him effortlessly.

From advising Marsh on a career choice that took him away from Auburn, where he’d been the head coach for 16 years and won 12 of his own NCAA titles, to giving Hawke the confidence to take the program’s current reigns, to encouraging his athletic director even though Quick was the one battling for his life, to being the ear and shoulder Gaines consistently went back to throughout his entire storybook career, Quick was there.

Always there.

Still there.

“When he called me on Dec. 22, it took him just a minute to tell me he had an inoperable brain tumor, then he went on to tell me how much he appreciated me and lift me up,” Jacobs said. “He takes one minute to convey to me that he’s got this ‘little’ thing called an inoperable brain tumor and then takes five minutes to lift me up and encourage me.

“It was unbelievable.”

That’s just Richard, Gaines said.

“He was and continues to be the most influential person in my life,” said Gaines. “He was my coach, a second father to me and he was my friend. I don’t know how much closer you can get than those three when you are an athlete and you think about the things you want to have when someone influences you.”

And so he lives on.

“His inspiration is his legacy. His example is his legacy,” Jacobs said. “Nothing that he has won — no trophies on the mantle. It’s just him. The way he impacted my life, his coaches, his prior coaches and athletes, his grandchildren, his children. That’s his legacy, the impact he had on them.

“Not only his words of encouragement, but the way he lived out his own life. You get those two things to match up, you can leave a legacy. And that’s what he did.”

Every day.

“There’s a saying, ‘A baby comes into the world crying and the world rejoices. And the way you want to go out is you rejoicing and the world crying.’ That’s the way Richard Quick went out,” Jacobs said.

“He was rejoicing. And we’re all here.”

Better because of Richard Quick.

MIKE SZVETITZ is sports editor of the Opelika-Auburn News. He may be reached at mszvetitz@oanow.com or 737-2513.