Center Grove swim coach Jim Todd hugs Emma Schoettmer after she won the 100-yard breaststroke at the 2012 girls state championships.
Daily Journal file photo
Jim Todd has quite literally been at Center Grove High School longer than many parts of the current building have. He’s coached through seven presidential administrations and at three different swimming pools since his arrival here in the fall of 1984.
He’s been leading the Trojans’ swim teams for so long that Brad Smith — now Center Grove’s aquatic director after a quarter of a century coaching at his alma mater, Indian Creek — can remember Todd coaching when he was a high school swimmer.
Little did Smith know way back then that he and Todd were going to end up becoming not only rivals, but the best of friends.
Forty seasons of coaching high school swimming in Indiana — 38 of those at Center Grove — have brought plenty of memories, but as he enters the penultimate weekend of his career here, the relationships that Todd has built with his swimmers and coaching peers are what he appreciates most.
They’re also valued by those closest to him.
“He was such an instrumental part of my teenage years,” said Michelle (McKeehan) Versfeld, a 2008 Center Grove graduate and a four-time state champion in both the 200-yard individual medley and 100-yard breaststroke. “We just, right from the start, got along really well. Our personalities meshed really well. He had a good balance of being hard, but also knowing when I needed a break and needed some grace.”
‘I’ve got your back’
Those long-standing friendships — with fellow coaches, current and former swimmers and others in the local swim community — have been a godsend in times of tragedy, which Todd has encountered all too frequently. The coach has had to mourn the loss of both of his parents as well as his first wife, Pam, during his career, and his son-in-law, J.T. Spencer, died suddenly just last month at the age of 39.
When times have gotten toughest, Todd says, the swim community has stepped up to the plate for him.
“Some of my closest friends are in this swimming world,” he said. “The swimming world has come to the rescue for me and my family in terms of reaching out to us when my father died, or my mother died, or when my wife died — and now when my son-in-law died. The swimming world has done an amazing job of helping us get through these moments, and for that I will be eternally grateful.”
J.T. Spencer’s wife, Amy, is the oldest of Todd’s two daughters. She was an All-State swimmer for the Trojans in high school, and she now works on the pool deck alongside her father as a varsity assistant and as the head of the Center Grove Aquatic Club. Spencer has seen and felt firsthand over and over the level of respect and admiration that her dad has earned.
“It’s almost an understatement to say that he’s impacted a lot of people,” Spencer said. “Just watching the amount of support that we have gotten from his former swimmers, not just current swimmers. When my mom passed away, the amount of swimmers that were there. When my husband passed away, the amount of swimmers and former swimmers that were there. People that I did not swim with and I did not coach, they were there for him. I thought that that spoke volumes about the impact that he’s had on others.”
Smith has been among the first to reach out during the tough times, and Todd reciprocated that kindness when Smith’s son Chase was fighting cancer for nearly seven years before passing away in 2021. The two longtime rival coaches have consistently helped one another through hardship over the years, and when tragedy struck again this winter, Smith did what he could to help out with the Trojans’ high school teams while Todd and Spencer tended to far more important business at home.
By this point in that friendship, few words are necessary.
“It was just, ‘Jim, I’ve got your back,’” Smith said.
Winning isn’t everything
While there have been bad times in Todd’s life over these past four decades, they’ve been significantly outweighed by the good.
Under Todd’s watch, the Center Grove girls have landed in the state’s top 10 an incredible 18 times, with runner-up finishes in 1998, 1999 and 2010. The boys have seven top-10 state showings, topping out at fifth in 2005. The Trojan boys won 27 sectional titles in a row from 1986 to 2012; the girls claimed 26 straight from 1990 to 2015.
Center Grove’s girls reclaimed their sectional crown earlier this month, ending Franklin’s six-year run on top; the boys are favored to do the same this weekend for what would be the first time in a decade.
The fact that Todd is retiring at season’s end has only provided the Trojans with more incentive.
”Coach Todd’s had an amazing 40-year career, so we definitely want to end it on the best way possible,” senior Ben Clarkston said. “Hopefully we’re able to win sectional and try to do as best we can at state. Definitely no lack of motivation, for sure.”
“All of the guys really want to try to win this sectional,” classmate Garrett Crist said. “It would mean a lot to all of us, especially with me and Ben’s last year, and coach Todd’s last year; we’re really hyped up about it and riled up about it.”
A victory would be a fitting way to end a career loaded with achievements, but the trophies and medals not what Todd will remember most about his tenure at Center Grove. When he thinks back about everything he’s been a part of, it’s not necessarily his many individual state champions — from Abbie Goff in 1992 to Ethan Martin in 2021 and the 15 other event winners in between — that come to mind first. It’s the reactions from his less heralded swimmers after they finally achieved goals that they hadn’t thought possible.
Todd recalls one particular swimmer decades ago who burst with jubilation after an also-ran finish in the 500-yard freestyle at a sectional meet.
“When he looked up at the clock, you’d have thought he just won a gold medal at the Olympics,” Todd said. “To see that reaction from a young man who actually finished fourth or fifth in his heat, but he was so excited about it.
“This past year at our county meet, watching Josh McRoberts break six minutes for the first time in the 500 free, and him getting done and him hitting the water because he’s so excited about it. That, to me, is more important than everything else.”
Leaving the door open
Once this season and his head coaching career reach their end at next weekend’s boys state finals, Todd isn’t entirely sure what will come next. He hasn’t ruled out an eventual return to the pool, but at least for the next year, he says his focus will be on grandparenting, doing some work around his house and perhaps learning to cook.
If he starts getting the coaching itch again after that, he just might scratch it.
“I promised my wife, and I promised whoever takes over my position here, that I will give them 365 days to make this program their own,” Todd said. “And if at that time, if I’m pulling whatever little hair I have left out, because I’m bored to tears and I want to come back and coach, hopefully they’ll have me in an assistant capacity where I don’t have to deal with all of the headaches.”
Spencer is pretty sure her dad will end up back on deck at some point.
“There’s not a lot of fishing he can do in the winter,” she said with a laugh.
Even if Todd never sets foot on that tile floor again, his legacy in swimming — be that with Center Grove, in Johnson County, in Indiana or just within the sport in general — is secure. The haul of trophies and medals attached to his name are hard evidence of that, as is the Trojans’ sparkling new natatorium.
Seeing this palatial facility become a reality is something that Todd takes a great deal of pride in. When asked about his most satisfying career accomplishments, it’s right at the top of the list.
“This pool is going to be around a long time, and hopefully there’s going to be a whole lot faster people coming through here due to it,” Todd said. “If that happens, then I’ll go to my grave feeling pretty good about it.”
In the short term, though, both Todd and his final boys team are focused on trying to perform as best they can over the next two weekends.
Fully unpacking a four-decade legacy can wait. This week and next are about reclaiming a long-lost sectional crown and trying to go out on as high a note as possible.
“I’m kind of more living in the moment right now,” Todd said. “When it’s all said and done, then I’ll look back and reminisce a little bit about it. But right now, my focus is on this weekend.”
No matter what this weekend brings, there’s no denying Todd’s impact on Indiana high school swimming, which is bracing for the loss of a true icon.
“The sport’s going to miss a great man,” Smith said.
