Set a goal: Go for gold

Published 7:00 am Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Jeff Float may have the perfect swimmer’s name. He also has a winning way with motivating others to achieve their dreams.

The hearing impaired Olympic gold medalist, who was a member of the top men’s relay team in 1984, visited Oak Harbor Thursday evening as part of Skagit Valley College’s annual focus on disabilities awareness.

Just over 50 students at the Whidbey Island campus of SVC have documented disabilities, according to Carol Funk, the college’s disabilities support services coordinator. About 1,900 students attend the college in any given quarter.

Some students get around in wheelchairs, while others have problems hearing and seeing. A growing number of students come to the college with diagnosed learning disabilities that can make it difficult for them to read well or take tests under time pressures.

The college does what it can to help, from offering large-print books to voice-activated computers.

Funk, who helped arrange Float’s visit, said it was nice for students and community members to see someone who knew how to set goals and then go out and achieve them.

For instance, Float hung an Olympics flag above his bed, so that it was the last thing he saw when he went to bed at night and the first thing he saw in the morning before he hustled off to early morning swim practice.

“Visual cues. Those are powerful techniques that a lot of people don’t even know about or take for granted,” Funk said.

Or as Float put it: “I saw the end result I was shooting for.”

Float, 43, came down with meningitis when he was 13 months old and lost hearing in both ears. But that didn’t stop him from becoming a premiere athlete.

Nor did it keep him from attending public school as one of the first mainstreamed deaf students in Sacramento, Calif.

Wearing hearing aids, he underwent speech therapy and learned to lip read. He also learned to work hard.

Float got up at 5 a.m. every morning to swim, tired or not. His goal was nothing less than to become one of the world’s fastest swimmers.

In 1980, at age 20, Float was eager to put his hours of endless training to the test.

But he and other members of the U.S. Olympic team suffered a setback when President Jimmy Carter decided the U.S. would boycott the Olympic Games, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The games were held in Moscow that year.

Float and other top American athletes could only sit on the sidelines, and wait another four years.

As a student at the University of Southern California, Float watched as a new Olympic-sized swimming pool was constructed on campus. That pool was to be the site of the 1984 Olympic games — where Float would win his gold medal.

He remembers thinking, “(The Olympics) are going to happen whether I’m ready or not. So I better start training hard … I knew my days were numbered.”

After winning, he wound up on the cover of Sports Illustrated, met with President Reagan and participated in a playful Vanity Fair photo shoot where he and his teammates surrounded actress Raquel Welch.

These days, Float has a career in real estate and coaches a Sacramento swim team. He occasionally travels, giving motivational speeches. His portable video show includes footage from his childhood, funny scenes where he snorkels in a backyard pool, as well as high-stakes national swim meets.

Cassandra Woods, 22, an SVC student studying to become a nurse, wondered if Float saw himself in any of the kids he coaches.

Yes, Float said. There happens to be one 16-year-old hearing impaired swimmer on his team.

“He looks like me, acts like me and swims like me,” he said.

If he sets goals like Float, who knows where he’ll wind up.