The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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TRACKING THE PACK 16 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY TIM PEELER Don Easterling, the father of NC State swimming's Red Leg- end Pride, was a complicated motivator who put a cham- pionship mark on the Willis Casey Aquatics Center with a personality that was part co- median, part magician, part storyteller. Easterling won 17 men's and women's ACC championships, including 12 in a row from 1971- 82, and was a 2016 inductee into the NC State Athletic Hall of Fame. He died at his home in Keswick, Va., on Jan. 14 at age 90. Easterling arrived at NC State in 1969 after two decades of success as a club swimming coach and a stint as head coach at Texas-Arlington, where he took his team to an unlikely second-place finish at the 1969 NCAA Championships. He had caught the eye of Willis Casey, who won 11 Southern Con- ference and ACC championships in his 24 years as swimming coach. After being elevated to athletics director, Casey hired Easterling to replace him. The transition from one legend to another was fairly smooth. Easterling won his first ACC crown two years after his arrival and had a dozen titles in the trophy case before the Wolfpack was dethroned. In 1972, NC State won all 17 events at the conference meet, an unprecedented feat that has never been matched. Easterling also produced Olympians, for both the United States and other countries, and NCAA champions. Great Brit- ain's Duncan Goodhew won gold medals at both the Montreal (1976) and Moscow (1980) Olympics, while Wolfpack swim- mers Steve Gregg, Dan Harrigan and David Fox claimed medals for the United States. In addition to 15 men's titles, Easterling started the women's varsity team in 1978 and led it to a pair of conference champi- onships. He had a career dual-meet record of 328-118, winning 71.7 percent of his competitions against ACC opponents. "Coach was a master motivator," said Fox, a former All- America sprinter who won both NCAA titles and an Olympic gold medal. "He constantly wrote and spoke to his athletes. He wrote small notes to each swimmer on their weekly practice logs. "I would get longer, handwritten notes when he thought I needed them and always before my big meets. Even after I was gone from NC State, the letters never stopped coming. I've still got them and reread them on occasion — they mean the world to me." Through the years, Easterling coached 40 All-Americans (24 men, 16 women), seven fu- ture Olympians and four Pan American Games medalists. He was named ACC Coach of the Year three times (1984 and '92 for men, 1991 for women) and the National Collegiate and Scholastic Swimming Coach of the Year in 1993. His legacy endured long af- ter he left NC State in 1994. In 2009, he was selected for the second class of the Texas Swimming Hall of Fame, in- ducted with Fox into the North Carolina Swimming Hall of Fame in 2017 and named one of the top 100 coaches of the past 100 years by the College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America in 2021. Easterling was demanding of everyone, including himself. "I remember the time he was in the hospital for kidney stones," Fox said. "He was in excru- ciating pain all night long passing stones. The next day, he was on the pool deck for practice at 6 a.m., white as a ghost and barely able to stand. "But he coached us as hard as ever that day — maybe harder. That's who he was, a coach every day of his life." Gregg recalled that Easterling always stressed preparation and dedication. "He used to preach all the time about preparing mentally," Gregg said. "We had all swum in hundreds of meets, but what I took from that was to not just go through the motions, no matter what the competition was. "It was the smaller meets, maybe when you were tired and it seemed less important, that were most important: Get your mind right and the rest will follow." Easterling's swimmers went on to succeed outside the pool as well. Former swimmer Bill Toler, who earned a degree in business administration from the Poole College of Manage- ment, went on to become CEO of several major companies. Fox has likewise done well in the business world and is now a financial analyst for Goldman Sachs. "One of the quotes that found its way into my letters regu- larly was, 'There is room at the top, and you're going there — all the way,'" Fox said. "I recently reread the letter he wrote me after I signed with NC State. He touched on both academic and professional success, making it to the top of the sport in the NCAAs and in international competition and building my closest friends for life in my teammates. "Everything he said would happen in the letter came true. He had a lot to do with all of it." ■ During his tenure at NC State, Easterling coached 40 All-Americans and seven future Olympians. The longtime Wolfpack swimming coach died Jan. 14 at age 90. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS Don Easterling Recalled As 'Master Motivator' — In The Pool And In Life Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.