University of Tennessee Athletics
POWERING THE T: A New Citizen
December 14, 2011 | Men's Swimming & Diving
Dec. 14, 2011
BY AMANDA PRUITT
UTsports.com
KNOXVILLE -- Dave Parrington has coached his divers in dozens of top national and international competitions through the years at Tennessee, but this time will be different.
When Tennessee's Allan Jones Aquatic Center opens its doors Thursday for the USA Diving Winter National Championships, Parrington will be coaching for the first time as an American citizen.
The Vols 21-year diving coach completed the final step of his U.S. naturalization process Wednesday with a ceremony at the Howard H. Baker, Jr. United States Courthouse in Knoxville, joined by his wife Marie and extended family.
The proceeding completed a three-month process filled with paperwork and taking American civics tests. When the national anthem is played before the competition, no doubt the time-honored pre-event tradition will carry a new meaning for Parrington.
From growing up at his parents' swim club in Zimbabwe to traveling across the ocean to compete for the University of Houston, Parrington knew from the time he was even 14 years old that he wanted to be a coach.
"I remember thinking to myself, `This is something that I want to do,' but even to this day in southern Africa, you can't really make a living out of it," Parrington said. "I didn't know how I was going to do that, but I knew I wanted to coach."
That quest has taken him on a journey literally to every corner of the world, working at the collegiate level in Knoxville and also working with divers at the very highest stages of international competition.
Now in every jury duty-, voting-privileged sense, Parrington is officially right at home coaching in Knoxville as five Tennessee divers compete for a spot in next summer's Olympic Trials.
That country proved to be the perfect place for the Parrington family, swimmers by trade in England.
In the late 1950s, Great Britain was encouraging citizens to move to its colonies in Africa and around the world to places like Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Seeing a good opportunity, the Parrington family moved from England to the colony of Rhodesia, present-day Zimbabwe, a land-locked country that borders South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia.
"My folks were adventurous, so they decided to move to Africa, which was great," Parrington said. "I was about 3 at the time. I don't really remember growing up before we moved to what was then Rhodesia."
His parents immediately set up shop in their new homeland. His father was the manager of a pool and professional swimming coach; his mother, a two-time Olympic swimmer, coached as well.
Not only did his parents run the local swimming club, but they also lived in a house right across the street from the pool. There was no doubt where Parrington was going to spend his free hours day-in, day-out.
"The pool was a 30-second walk from where we lived," Parrington said. "I'd get back from school, do homework, and be over at the pool as quick as I could be. I spent my life in the water."
When he wasn't swimming, he was playing water polo. When he wasn't playing water polo, he was messing around on the springboards with friends. As the years went by, he gravitated toward competitive diving.
The diving coaches at the club were not full-time professionals. They all kept busy with their day jobs, stopping by the pool during their lunch breaks and returning to the deck at the end of the workday.
When coaches weren't overseeing the training, the team naturally took matters into their own hands by trying to improve each other's techniques.
"During the school vacations and holidays -- myself, my teammates and buddies -- we would dive a lot during the mornings waiting for them to come to the pool," Parrington said. "We'd just be messing around on the boards and coaching each other. We did a lot of that. I certainly learned a lot doing that without realizing it at the time."
Parrington's early career did not end with just coaching his teammates. By the time he was 14, he found himself coaching the even younger divers and really enjoyed the work.
Looking back, he was hardly surprised he took up coaching.
"I grew up around coaches," Parrington said. "Even though my parents weren't diving coaches, I was around coaching and teaching and that type of thing all my life."
At the age of 23, Parrington enrolled as a freshman at the University of Houston. While diving for the Cougars, he also represented the brand-new country of Zimbabwe in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
In the same way he trained younger students back home in Africa, he often found himself coaching junior divers at the local club toward the end of his college career.
"When the coach was on the road and needed someone to cover for the age-group divers, I would always be the one to cover and I got more and more into it," Parrington said. "By the time I was a senior, I was coaching some summer-league diving and just knew that's what I wanted to do.
"So I did whatever it took to find a way."
The doors in college coaching started opening as Parrington was wrapping up his degree. After spending a year as a student assistant, his coach at Houston retired and Parrington assumed the full-time job.
Seven years later in 1990, Parrington was named the diving coach at Tennessee.
"It was a great opportunity to coach men and women in a great conference with a great program, so I came," Parrington said.
Evan Stewart, a native of Harare, Zimbabwe, became an instant star on the collegiate level when he arrived as a freshman for the 1993-94 season. He won the NCAA Championships in the 3-meter event his first year and won again as a sophomore.
"That was my first one as a coach, and that was a huge moment professionally in my career," said Parrington, who was teammates with Stewart's father back in Zimbabwe. "It was a very exciting moment, and later that summer he won the World Championships.
"That particular year was a big year and kind of a break-out year in terms of the success we've had since then."
Between men's and women's competition, Parrington's divers have won six NCAA diving championships and nine USA Diving national titles, including a 1-meter trophy won in 2010 by Michael Wright, who is diving again this week at Winter Nationals.
With five divers competing this week at the USA Diving Winter National Championships, Parrington will do his best to help guide them to their next career goal: a berth in the Olympic Trials.
A top 12 finish in the 3-meter or platform competitions would secure a position in next summer's competition as the Tennessee divers work to represent the United States.
Parrington's new homeland.
