Salt Water Sorority

A bucktoothed, towheaded 11-year-old named Mary Hoerger won the springboard diving championship. Powerful Lenore Right of Homestead, Pa., fastest woman swimmer in the U. S.. broke two world records (mile and 880-yd. freestyle). Georgia Coleman, Olympic springboard diving champion in 1932, was on the sidelines, judging, as was the girl who swam across the English Channel in 1926, Gertrude Ederle. To take the place of

Mrs. Eleanor Holm Jarrett, perennial backstroke champion, who was appearing in a Dallas doorshow last week, were her protegees the Kompa sisters, Erna and Elizabeth. Quite as pretty, almost as fast, they finished first and second in the 220-yd. race. Katherine Rawls won the 300-metre medley for the fourth year in a row, just after being severely frightened by a bolt of lightning which struck a nearby telegraph pole. RealtorJoseph P. Day, dressed in a bathing suit, handed out prizes. It was the Amateur Athletic Union National championship swimming meet for women. When it was over, after four days of splashing in & about a Manhattan Beach, N. Y. pool, that small, sunburned sorority of young women whose agile and sometimes ornamental torsos are perennial decorations for U. S. sports pages had several spectacular new members, a new list of champions: 100-metre free style .............Olive McKean 440-yd. free style .............Lenore Right 880-yd. free style ..............Lenore Right Mile free style ...............Lenore Right 220-yd. back stroke...........Elizabeth Rompa 220-yd. breast stroke..............Ratherine Rawls 300-metre medley .................Katherine Rawls Springboard dive................ Mary Hoerger Platform dive Dorothy Poynton Hill 300-metre medley relay ..............Women's Swimming Association 880-yd. relay. . .Washington Athletic Club

That the turnover among women swimmers is phenomenally rapid is one of the axioms of the sport. Encouraging to coaches, who expect serious competition at next year's Olympic games, was the demonstration at last week's meet that new swimmers are now arriving on the scene not singly but in bunches. Familiar to rotogravure readers are the Rawls sisters--Katherine (18), Evelyn (16), Dorothy (15), Peggy (10). Evelyn last week finished third in the free-style mile, fourth in the medley. Dorothy was fourth in the 220-yd. breast stroke. Peggy stayed at home. At Manhattan Beach last week, four more families of swimmers -- the Hopkins twins of Miami Beach, the Gormans of Homestead, the Rompas of Manhattan and the Hoergers of Miami Beach -- submerged into celebrity. The last two families at least seemed particularly likely to account for themselves creditably in the future. Erna (21) and Elizabeth Kompa (20) are so much alike that they are usually mistaken for twins. They both have secretarial jobs, doctor sweethearts, a taste for radio concerts which leads to bickering because Erna prefers Wagner, Elizabeth Tchaikovsky. Daughters of a German mining engineer who arrived in the U. S. eleven years ago, they started to swim at Manhattan Beach in 1928 when their father got a job as night clerk at a nearby hotel. A lifeguard observed their talent, brought them to the attention of Leo Handley, Women's Swimming Association coach. They have an older sister who cannot swim. Phenomenally pretty, they use much lipstick, wear clothes made by Mrs. Rompa. retire at 10 p. m. every night. Both specialize in the backstroke, of which they are among the ablest exponents in the world.

Of the Hoergers, Ruth (12), Mary ( 11 ), and Helen (5), Mary distinguished herself most last week. In the springboard dive, she amazed her judges with a 2 1/2 forward somersault which Olympic Platform Champion Dorothy Poynton Hill had said the day before no woman could ever hope to execute perfectly. When the judges, adding up points for her nine other efforts, declared 74-lb. Mary Hoerger the national champion, she bugged her eyes, wagged a hand at a judge, shrilled: "Hold me. My knees are weak." In the platform dive, Ruth Hoerger finished second to blonde Dorothy Poynton Hill, who won for the fourth year in a row.

That Mary was the only Hoerger who justified headlines last week must have been a profound disappointment to her mother, who has reared her girls as if they were guppies. As soon as her children were three months old, she tossed them into the water. All three could swim before they could walk. The backyard of the Hoerger home at Miami Beach is a swimming pool. The front yard is the Atlantic Ocean. When not swimming at home, Hoergers swim in more de luxe surroundings, the famed Miami Biltmore pool, where Mrs. Hoerger is swimming instructor. Their father, Fred Hoerger, went to Miami Beach to be general super intendent for Carl Fisher Properties. Their mother, nee Bilsbarrow, arrived there after paddling a canoe from St. Louis to New Orleans (1,260 mi.) in 42 days, al most won the national tower-diving championship in 1920. She teaches her children the family specialty by harnessing them in a belt with swivel joints and making them practice until they know the proper movements of each dive. Mary Hoerger, at 8, placed ninth in the senior Olympic trials, in which her entry was accepted only after Mrs. Hoerger had hired a lawyer to persuade the committee that she was not too young to compete. Experts expect that Mary Hoerger's most serious rival for her new title may be her small sister. Helen Hoerger could swim 40 ft. at 11 months, dive from a 30-ft. tower at 4 years. Now almost 6 and weighing 46 lb., she dives better than her sister did at the same age.

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