Swann enjoys athletic rebirth

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Swann enjoys athletic rebirth
Track and field gives 62-year-old another chance to compete
By St. Clair Murraine
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PERRY - Earl Swann's job sometimes makes it hard for him to get much sleep at night. His right leg is a little sore, and his children don't think he was being too smart when he decided to try competitive track and field.

"They think I'm nuts, but everything I do is business," Swann said. "Even though it's recreation, I don't like to lose."

Swann, a soft-spoken, bespectacled 62-year-old, seemingly has rekindled the determination he had when he was a left-handed pitcher and football player at Madison County High School. Four decades removed from the prime of his athletic years, Swann will compete in five events this weekend at the Florida Senior Games.

The 100-meter sprint is the event that concerns him most. Since this past summer when he competed in a qualifier for the state meet, he's been bothered by swelling in his right leg. The thought of being matched against younger runners in the 60-64 age bracket doesn't faze him, though.

"I'm not going against them," he said. "I'm going against my time. I'm not worried about not doing too well; it's my leg. It's not totally healed yet."

The high jump, long jump, javelin and pole vault also are on Swann's schedule today in Cape Coral.

The months that he's put into preparing is the longest that he's been involved in track and field as an athlete. He did some track and field coaching in the mid-1960s, but he might not have had his first track experience in high school if his coach, Gene Cox, hadn't been short of participants for a track meet.

Cox called on his football players and some baseball players to fill the lineup. Swann was one of the first picks.

"I didn't know what the hurdles were until I got there," he said. "It was fascinating because in Monticello, we played football and baseball."

The track meet was the last competitive one for Swann until earlier this year, when he decided to try the state championship qualifier. He said he'll try to take his comeback farther by competing in the Georgia senior games next spring.

Just like Swann, said Cox, a legendary football coach.

"He had a tremendous will to win," Cox said, recalling the one season that Swann played football for him. "He was kind of small and he liked to hit you. He was tough. He didn't mind getting hit.

"He's been a highly motivated person in everything he did. He just made up his mind that he was going to be a success in everything he's done."

Swann left for the state meet two days early to ensure that he'll get plenty of rest. There will be too much work to do if he waits a day later, he said. Swann owns an insurance agency in downtown Perry, where he also runs a bail bond business.

He calls Perry his home, but his athletic roots are in Monticello. He still has a bail bond office in Monticello, where he also does some of his training. His regimen includes crunches, sit-ups and two miles of running daily, usually with his girlfriend, Susan Poitevin.

"I think it's neat," she said of Swann's athletic quest. "I hope I can run when I'm his age."

He makes it look easy, she said. He said it's not. "They call me the Bengay Kid," he said.

The aches aren't enough to stop him, Swann said, but his drive isn't because he's trying to defy age or anything of the sort.

"It's not a second life," he said, "it's competition."