Sacramento-area swim coach instructed eight Olympic medalists. This new book tells his story

One of greatest sports stories to come out of Sacramento emerged from a Carmichael swim club where Sherm Chavoor coached eight Olympic medalists.

He got his start after World War II, initially coaching at the YMCA. Later at his business, the Arden Hills Swim and Tennis Club, Chavoor coached greats like Mark Spitz, Debbie Meyer and Mike Burton. Though Chavoor has been dead for 30 years, his story is now coming to light with the release of a new book titled “Victory in the Pool.”

“Chavoor was brilliant,” said the book’s author Bill George, a Granite Bay resident and former KCRA editor and public relations professional. “He said many times he was the only millionaire swim coach.”

George’s 233-page book recounts the story of one of Sacramento’s greatest claims to sports fame and the improbable man behind it.

Crediting Chavoor

Chavoor could be hard-driving, having his swimmers log 15,000 yards a day in an era when this was unheard of.

“Sherm was my best friend,” said Burton, a three-time Olympic gold medalist between the 1968 and 1972 Summer Games who now lives in Montana. “And together we revolutionized distance swimming.”

Debbie Meyer, who now goes by her married name of Debbie Meyer Weber and lives in Reno, swept the 200-meter, 400-meter, and 800-meter freestyle events at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City as a precocious 16-year-old.

Asked how much of her success was due to Chavoor, Meyer Weber said that some was due to Burton “because I always wanted to beat him” and that her parents also deserved some credit. But, she added, “Sherm is probably 90% of it.”

Meyer Weber, Burton and another Olympic medalist that Chavoor trained, Jeff Float each contributed forewords to George’s book, with Float’s wife Jan Float providing fact checking.

Spitz won a staggering seven gold medals at the Munich games in 1972. He wasn’t interviewed for the book, though George said he tried for a year-and-a-half to make it happen. Spitz also didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.

Chavoor hadn’t been shy, though, in telling a wire reporter about how Spitz, who’d trained at his club as a child, had returned after falling far short in the 1968 games. “He already had his strokes down,” Chavoor said during the 1972 games. “We just helped him psychologically.”

George wrote of Chavoor rebuking Spitz after he set a world record in the 200-meter butterfly, an event he feared but narrowly failed to break two minutes as Chavoor had pushed him to do.

“Chavoor had an ulterior motive in verbally lashing his superstar,” George wrote. “He later confessed he didn’t know if Spitz had eased up or not, but he wanted him to believe he could have gone faster, a psychological ploy to motivate him in upcoming races.”

The man behind the swimmers

Chavoor was born Izikiel Correa near Hilo, Hawaii in April 1919. Near the end of World War II, as George wrote in his book, Correa changed his name to Sherm Chavoor, which was the name of a celebrated UCLA athlete.

The Sacramento area Chavoor got his local start as a swim coach after World War II, training swimmers like Tak Iseri at the YMCA. Subsequently, Chavoor obtained the necessary funds to open Arden Hills Swimming and Tennis Club in 1954, which would eventually make him a wealthy man.

George got to know Chavoor during his days at KCRA in the 1980s when Chavoor would call the newsroom for info like scores of games. George described Chavoor as a “notorious Yankee fan” who’d want to discuss managerial decisions by that team. “He was bigger than life,” George said. “And in a lot of ways, he just kind of took the air out of the room.”

George’s wife Sue George said her family belonged to Chavoor’s club when she was growing up. She remembered her mother swimming at the club with other women during winter mornings in the early 1970s. Sometimes, one of the women would get out of the pool to get hot showers going.

“Sherm would always get on the loudspeaker and tell them, ‘Turn it off,’” Sue George said. “My mom has very vivid memories of that.”

Chavoor owned his club until 1985. He also continued to coach, retiring just two years before his death at 73 in 1992, according to the Associated Press. The AP’s obituary noted that Chavoor’s swimmers won 31 Olympic medals in all, including 20 golds.

Aside from Meyer Weber, Burton, Spitz, and Float, the other Olympic medalists Chavoor trained at Arden Hills Swim and Tennis Club were: Ellie Daniel, whose married surname is Drye; John Ferris; John Nelson; and Sue Pedersen, whose married surname is Pankey.

The man behind the book

Pulling the story together fell to the 69-year-old George, who said he retired in recent years as communications director for U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock and has since ramped up creative activities.

“It’s turned into a full-time job,” George said. “That hasn’t made my wife feel happy. But we’ll just say it’s kept me very busy with a purpose.”

Local viewers might also know George’s work, as he’s made several documentary films over the years about California history that have aired on KVIE. His subjects include the Gold Rush, transcontinental railroad, and a recently-aired work on Rancho Cordova’s history.

He was drawn to “Victory in the Pool” because, he said, the story had never been told in its entirety. “My problem is, or my issue is, I don’t want to write a book that there’s been 10 books written about,” George said.

“Victory in the Pool” is drawing a positive response so far, both from George’s friends and from Meyer Weber, who called it “very, very, very accurate.”

Joyce Mitchell knew George when they worked at KCRA and said she wasn’t surprised about him writing a book “because he’s a multi-tasker and a very good writer.”

Mitchell said the book is excellent, partly because it captured “the personalities of all these wonderful swimmers that (Chavoor) was coaching. And it gave us more of a behind the scenes look at what they had to endure to accomplish what they did.”

Mike Marando, who worked with George at the California Trade and Commerce Agency in the 1990s, said he was on chapter 14 of his friend’s book.

“So far from what I’ve read, this is the preeminent book on swimming in the Sacramento area,” Marando said.

If you go

What: Presentation by Bill George on his new book “Victory in the Pool”

Where: Sacramento Room at Central Library

When: 1 p.m. May 13