Sensational senior

Troy's Ackley will compete at National Senior Games in August

By DAVID LESNICK/The Daily Inter Lake

When Ella Ackley puts her mind to something, look out. Nothing gets in her way.

"I'm a real goal oriented person," Ackley said after a recent workout at The Summit swimming pool.

"Once I set my mind to it, it's done. No problem."

The 66-year-old grandmother from Troy, who resumed a competitive swimming career just 2 1/2 years ago, will compete at the National Senior Games in Stanford, Calif., Aug. 1-4. She will swim in six events at the University Pool on the campus of Stanford.

"I'm hoping to place third in something," she said.

"I should place in top seven or eight. I'm hoping and praying to take a third place.

"It's just amazing to see 'seniors competing)," she said.

"From 55 on up, there will be some 400 swimmers at the meet. They will be in excellent shape. See, not everyone in the U.S. is overweight and out of shape."

Ackley said her ex-husband, Corky Teska, was the one who encouraged her to get active again.

"Corky said I should do Senior Olympics," she said.

"He played tennis."

Ackley had no interest in tennis, so she jumped on the Internet to check out the Montana Senior Olympics Web site to see if any sports were of interest.

"I clicked on swim events, looked at the state records," she said.

"I said: 'I can do this. So I started swimming.'"

She restarted her swim career shortly after that at a local pool in Boston while visiting her son.

"I used to swim competitively in California as a teenager," she said.

"I could hold my own in Southern California in the 1950s. I swam for five years."

The one obstacle Ackley had to overcome on her return to Lincoln County was finding a place locally to swim on a regular basis.

"No pool (in Troy), it's pretty hard to swim," she said.

The Sandpoint West Athletic Club, which is 75 miles away, has a 25-meter, six-lane indoor pool. So that's where she does the majority of her swimming.

"Mile and a half each day," she said of how far she goes.

"I've been doing four or five (workouts a week), the last couple of weeks,"

In Libby, she can dip her toe at the Venture Motor Inn indoor heated pool. However that pool is so small, lap swimming is not an option. So Ackley wears a belt around her waist and fastens that to another attachment, which is tied to the pool ladder. That allows her to remain in one spot while working on her strokes. Kind of like treading water.

"Right now, it's still real enjoyable," she said of her trips to Sandpoint.

"My best friends are there. When I go there, I go out to dinner, do things. It's my social life. I love traveling, it's my favorite thing."

Ackley, although she had not competed in years, never ventured too far from the pool. She coached swimming in Libby for four years, and also taught school and coached swimming in Broadus and at a school in the Mojave Desert in California.

"Technique-wise, probably yes," she said of being a better swimmer today than when she was a teen.

"That's just because swimming has evolved. I'm not as strong, 20 pounds heavier.

This is her first trip to the National Senior Games. She's competed in Masters Nationals, placing sixth and seventh in events last May in Fresno, Calif.

Ackley will also compete in the Longcourse Nationals in Indianapolis, Ind., a week after the competition in California.

"There's unbelievable swimmers out there," she continued.

"It's mind-boggling, in my age group and even older. There are women in 65-69 (age group at nationals' that are doing times as fast as when I swam in high school. That's amazing."

When Ackley competed at the Montana Senior Olympics last month in Kalispell, she was the lone swimmer in four of the six events in her age bracket (65-69). She wishes more people would get involved.

"When I compete in Montana, there are not a whole lot of ladies," she said.

"I'm just competing against the clock."

Ackley set six senior swim records at the Senior Games here. She broke records in the 100 individual medley (1:38.78), 50 (51.06) and 100 (2:00.2) breaststroke, and 100 (1:26.16), 200 (3:13.44) and 500 (8:43.03) freestyle.

It was the third-straight state games appearance where she set state records.

She broke four last year in Butte and five in her first games in Butte in 2007. She competed in the 60-64 age bracket at those games.

"Yeah, it started out as a first meet thing," Ackley said.

"After that meet, I thought what if I really worked hard, what I could do."

Ackley has lived in the same house for 30 years. She moved with Teska from California to Montana to run the Racquet and Swim Club in Libby. She was born in Long Island, N.Y. Her family moved to California when she was 12.

"You know what was hard, was learning the new techniques," she said of swimming again.

"I worked six solid months on my stroke.

"Arm power, didn't worry about kicking (when I was a teenager). Now it's your arms and whole core body and twisting your body."

And now that she has mastered that part of her sport, she has no plans on leaving the pool anytime soon.

"I don't know (when I will quit swimming)," she said.

"I guess, until I can't."