Charles Hartley, a free-lance writer based in New Jersey, has written more than a thousand published sports articles. He earned Master’s degrees in Business Administration and Journalism. In addition, he was awarded his Bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University where he majored in English and Communications.
There you are, two miles from the Washington, D.C. city line, in an upscale suburb of suburban Maryland. You see a red brick school building, a classic looking grade school.
It’s called Little Flower.
This is where one of the greatest American swimmers of all-time spent eight years of her life going to school. She is Katie Ledecky, a Gold Medal winner at the London Olympic Games at age 15 who, during this coming week at the Summer Olympics, will be favored to win the 400 and 800 meter individual freestyle events.
By any measurements, she is one of the greatest athletes in the history of the sixty-year-old school.
Give her credit. She deserves it. Olympic Gold. What else needs to be said? Let’s all bow our heads. You’re awesome, Katie. No question.
But as great as she is, she’s not the best athlete ever to go to Little Flower.
There’s someone else. There’s always someone else. The older you get the truer this gets.
This someone else was a legendary athlete who attended the school several decades ago. To this day there are people still saying that, yes, Ledecky is amazing, but this guy was beyond that, a better all around athlete.
Not a good football, basketball and baseball player, he was a great football, basketball and baseball player. In sixth grade he won the Most Valuable Player award in Midget A football, Midget A basketball, and Midget A baseball. In that year he led the team to the football and baseball championship. In the Little Flower lunch room is a bust of Ledecky and this guy. As much as they talk about her they talk about him.
Like Ledecky he was on a summer swim team during his Little Flower years. Competing for the Mohican Hills Swim Club in the 11 and 12 age group, he finished second in the 50 meter freestyle in the Division H championship meet. His time was 32.8 seconds. Silver medal, baby. In the 50 meter backstroke he got a third place medal – same color as the Olympic bronze medals they give out – in the 50 meter backstroke. His time: 43.6.
At the same age Katie’s times were faster. But he was a four-sport dynamo, actually five if you count the time he went to the semi-finals of the Montgomery Country 12 and under tennis tournament and lost to Paul Meehan, who soon thereafter quit tennis to focus on soccerr.
This Little Flower legend went on to make it big. He became a sports blogger who occasionally got his stuff posted on Swimswam.com, one of the world’s most widely read sports information sites.
This blogger regularly thinks about his glory-filled Little Flower days and wonders what it must feel like for Ledecky to be the greatest female swimmer in the world in her events but only the second best in the history of her grade school.
Charles Hartley wonders.
Why?
Because he is that guy.
This article is written by and courtesy of Charles Hartley.
Do you have a picture of Katie at little flower ?
so wait, there’s a bust of this guy in the lunch room?
No, but he probably keeps one on his desk in the basement.
This was hilarious you guys all need to lighten up. I enjoyed
Was the name of the school really Little Flower? Or was that part of the satire?
Yes, Little Flower.
Haha. Nice
I disagree….the author had several brothers who also went to LF and could pound Charlie…Charles Barkley also went to LF as did Jim Thorpe…now THOSE guys were athletes.
Charlie Hartley did go for 24 points against Dematha and McDonald’s All American Adrian Branch. He did not stop in elementary school.
And his legend grew larger when he started writing swimming stuff for Swimswam.com.
Ok whether or not this was the intention, this article can be seen as a satire that critiques the lack of attention paid to swimming as a sport, and women in swimming and their place in the athletic canon if you will. It also can further the point that non-swimmers do not understand the commitment that goes into being a swimmer, and often might assert that a multisport athlete is more “athletically inclined” than someone who “only can participate in one sport”
Except that this article is written so badly it doesn’t even try to convey its intent.
Attila, Correct on both points.