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- Mr. Bob Grindey
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Mr. Bob Grindey
LB: Now John Connelly and David Binnie were later?
BG: Oh boy, yes. John Connelly and Dave Binnie were years later, and they have both been extremely successful. John in the insurance business over in Clearwater, and of course Dave was in the Hillsborough County School District as an assistant superintendent.
LB: As you said, sports really didn’t start until the year after you arrived. Can you give us a picture of those sports and coaches that were competing during those early years?
BG: For men, there was soccer. That was Charley Shrader, who was a physical education professor here. Cross country was Dr. Gill Hertz, who was the department chair. In the winter we had swimming. There was no basketball as yet. In the spring we had most of the sports because of the weather, since everything was outdoors. We had golf and tennis. Golf was coached by a gentleman named Wes Berner. Tennis was coached by Spafford Taylor. And then we had baseball coached by Hubert Wright. So we had about five to six men’s sports. We did have women’s tennis, and they were very dominating at that time because women’s athletics at the intercollegiate level had not really started to blossom yet. So they would go to Texas, Mississippi, and all over the country. They did very well.
LB: You were a coach, but you were also a teacher because you had a joint appointment. You were really a faculty member and in these days the physical education activity classes were required for graduation.
BG: Yes. They were required.
LB: Will you tell us about that requirement and particularly the swimming area, which you were in charge of?
BG: Well, it was unique and that was one of the things that brought me to USF. Our president, although he wasn’t really high on intercollegiate athletics, felt very strongly that young people should participate in active sports. With swimming being so prevalent in Florida, his idea was that swimming would be one of the most important skills someone in Florida should get. He required that every student would pass a requirement for swimming, by either taking a beginning swimming course or taking a test to prove they could swim. The test required students to dive into the water to do a 50 yard swim, which at that time were two lengths of our pool. Next was treading water for at least a minute in deep water. That was the requirement, and he was very strong on that. I remembered I think I mentioned to you, that we had a young man from the Philippine Islands who came to USF and was scheduled to graduate. He had gone home and they realized that he hadn’t passed the swimming requirement, and they brought him back to do the swimming requirement. Dr. Allen was very interested in students meeting the requirements.
LB: At some point in your career, perhaps after you left coaching, you became assistant athletic director in the Athletic Program. Will you tell us about that and that was a change for you?
BG: Well, when that happened at the other Florida universities coaches were on a completely different type of full-time coaching line then we were. USF was the only state university that had faculty on a half line on teaching and half line on coaching. So I don’t know whether it was the Board of Regents or the administration who decided that people would have to decide whether they were going to become fulltime faculty or be full-time coaches. At the time, I was spending probably more time in athletics with the trips and things like that than I was spending in teaching. I decided to go ahead and go on the coaching line and along with it to make that a full line. I became Assistant Director of Athletics. I did that for four years, and I really wasn’t very happy there. I don’t think I’m an administrative type. I didn’t agree with some of the things that were going on at that time and didn’t feel that I wanted to continue. I was in an unusual spot because I had been a coach with all of these people. Then all of the sudden, here I was, a director or assistant director telling them what to do. Also, after seeing things happen with salaries and programs that I just didn’t think was right, I finally resigned from that position.
LB: Jumping back to your aquatic days, you were a leader, early leader in the development of the scuba diving course. The first in the university system, wasn’t it?
BG: Right. We were the first credit course in underwater activities. That started the very first year that our pool was open which was late 1964 or early 1965. We had a course in skin and scuba diving. We taught students how to use snorkel, mask and fins, and then actually how to use the scuba equipment. Of course we taught the course in the pool. At that time, that was the only training that they were getting. They weren’t getting anything outside of the pool, so we arranged with some of the dive shops in the area to take people who passed our course out and put them in open water and give them the requirements which would allow them to become certified divers.
LB: How did the open water dive work?
BG: The students enjoyed that part of the course, although getting their certification was not part of passing the course. If they knew all of their textbook knowledge, and they could perform the skills in the swimming pool, they could pass the course. The experience of performing skills in open water was what they needed, so they enjoyed that. They paid for that extra, they didn’t pay the school, and they paid the dive shops to take them out on these trips. So they were very happy, and then eventually we incorporated that in with our continuing education program and used that as a supplement to the course.