Terry Ganley
University of Minnesota Associate Men and Women's Swimming Head Coach and Minneapolis native
Minnesota swimming associate head coach Terry Ganley
It's just kind of in my blood, I guess
I think I just have a pride for Minnesota, just being in Minnesota this many years. My parents have been here, and just being the pride in who we are and what we the University[University of Minnesota] stand for. I have two sons who graduated from Minnesota, and now my older son works here. It's just kind of in my blood, I guess.
My name is Terry Ganley and I am from Minneapolis. I grew up on the North side of Minneapolis, and I lived there all through high school, and well through college. Both of my parents were born in Minneapolis, lived there their entire lives. I am the youngest of six, so I have four older brothers and an older sister. All of my siblings were within two years of each other, except I am five and a half years later than everyone. All five of them live in Minnesota in the metro area. Three of my brothers are army vets, they all served in Vietnam. One of them is a retired Minneapolis police officer and one is a retired Minneapolis firefighter.
I think we were a typical family, a family back in the 50’s. My father could probably be described as a blue collar worker, and my mom stayed at home with the six of us kids. We were a pretty close family. I was ten when my brothers started going into the service for Vietnam, and so I think that alone brings your family closer. At the time you couldn’t have two brothers serving at the same time, so my parents went through three years of one son leaving right after the other. They were into the service right out of high school, drafted at eighteen. So I think that kind of kept us close. I think the dynamic was I had four older brothers who watched out for me, or at least thought they did. I snuck a few things by.
I grew up like I said in the north side of Minneapolis, lived there in the days where there was a lot of racial unrest. Basically there was riots, and my brother at the time was a police officer. So I felt like I had a lot of exposure to that. I live in northeast Minneapolis right now which has taken a huge change. I remember when I was younger, in the fifties and sixties, that area by the Stone Arch Bridge was just industrial, you wouldn't go down there by yourself at all, and now it's beautiful. You know when I was younger everybody wanted to live in the suburbs and had houses in the suburbs, and now there's a huge shift being back in the city.
I think starting swimming at age ten obviously developed me into what I am now
I think where I was in the family, because I was the youngest, I would say that really by the time I got to be a teenager my parents were pretty tired, just because my brothers had done everything sort of imaginable that could have been done. I started swimming when I was ten, I just kind of did that one on my own, no one else in my family was really an athlete. Probably because my parent couldn’t have really afforded it, but by the time I came around my siblings were pretty much gone.
I think for me, swimming was the whole neighborhood event. I was the youngest by quite a bit, everyone else was in the deep end and I couldn’t go in the deep end. I taught myself to swim, just because I wanted to get down there where everyone else was having fun. I started competitive swimming because the boy next door joined the local club team, and was bragging about how good he was and I thought I could beat him so I joined the team. He didn't last too long, but we had a pool four blocks from our house at a section in north Minneapolis where the whole neighborhood went swimming between four and five. I think swimming at age ten obviously developed me into what I am now. Somehow, I feel like I have a connection to swimming. Whether it’s with the people I’ve known since I was ten or the people I met here. A lot of people that I swam club with swam here [at the University of Minnesota], so it’s kind of like I have an extended family here.
There really wasn't that many athletic scholarships at the time
When I graduated high school in ‘73 it was kind of when Title IX was just coming in, there really wasn't that many opportunities. I mean, swimming back then was one of the only sports, other than track and field, that was especially organized for girls. There really wasn't that many athletic scholarships at the time, so really financially there really wasn't that many options, other than coming here[University of Minnesota]. To be honest I thought I would go for a year or two and swim, and then get married and live happily ever after. Part of that worked.
We had very minimal, really any training facilities. When I was a Freshman there was a pool across campus that did not have lockers. You carried everything around in your backpack everyday, your shampoo, your towels. We traveled in Vans, it was a two day drive to the Big Ten’s. But we were just happy to do it happy to have the opportunity. I’m not one who thinks women were treated poorly back then. It’s just the way it was and it's evolved. We didn't even think about the fact that we were lacking anything. We just did what we did what we did, and had fun.
Terry during her collegiate career as a Minnesota Golden Gopher
Thirty or forty years ago it[swimming] was not an expensive sport, I wanna say, as it is now. I mean it's pretty hard unless your parents have some money to fund you, where before it wasn't. School was so much less expensive. You know, when I was in college you could work all summer and pay your tuition. I think my first year, my tuition was fifteen hundred dollars. You could teach, and lifeguard and make enough to pay for tuition. It[University of Minnesota] was a commuter campus. No way would parents pay for you to live in a dorm when you could live five miles away for free. People came, did their thing and then left, there was not a very high graduation rate in four years because of that. It’s changed dramatically.
Terry and former women’s coach Jean Freeman celebrating their first women’s Big Ten Championship win in 1999
I got my degree in physical education when I graduated, and that time there really weren't many jobs teaching unless I moved out of the metro area. I didn't want to do that, so the head coach at the time Jean Freeman kind of worked with the athletic department to secure a position for me. As women's athletics grew obviously the position grew.
I think we've always been known as kindof the blue-collar team. I think historically we've been a team that achieves through development. We get kids who come in, work hard, who enjoy working hard, enjoy working as a team and improving. I think that’s still the culture we have, and I definitely would prefer working with kids who want to work hard and improve. I don’t know if it’s more rewarding, but it’s a good feeling to me; it fits my personality.
Photograph sources(in order)
Interview facilitators:
Katelyn Sauder, Riley Bren, Amelia Gronfor
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