Love for job keeps coach afloat

By LEO D. ROMMEL
STAFF WRITER

Peter Barry would like to say he's changed, but he hasn't. Not one bit, actually.

He speaks on the phone inside his home office with a pair of laptops in front of him. The one on the left has the Web site of his Somerset Hills YMCA swim team up on the monitor. The other shows a still-in-the-works blueprint of a kitchen. He works on both at the same time, typing on one and then switching over to the other, all while talking on the phone.

He knows the blueprint should take priority — it should be the only thing he should be concentrating on, he says — but swimming means so much to him that he's never quite been able to give anything else its full attention.

"When I was at Columbia studying architecture, my professor told me that my project wasn't up to par and he wondered if I had spent enough time working on it before submitting it,'' recalled Barry, 44, a resident of Mendham and the head coach of the Somerset Hills YMCA swim team. ""I remember him asking me, "Are you here to swim or study?' So, I chose study, sort of. I quit the team but stayed on as an assistant coach. There was no way I was going to give it up altogether.''

Not much has changed since then.

The 1982 graduate of Ridge High School has never been able to separate himself from backstrokes and butterflies. He swam competitively for 12 years, beginning at age 7, and then coached for the last three years of college after hanging up his Speedos as a sophomore. He returned to the Somerset Hills YMCA — where he first learned to swim — in 1994 as an assistant coach and then took over as head coach in 2001.

Swimming is so important to Barry that the license plate on his yellow 1973 L82 Corvette — which has no air conditioning or power steering and sits idle in the garage below his office — reads "GO SHY.''

"It's obvious what it means: Go Somerset Hills Y, which is what our team is known as,'' Barry said with a laugh. "Plus, how can a bright yellow Corvette be anything but shy?''

Barry, who also serves on the Mendham Environmental Commission and Open Space Committee, got into swimming the same way the majority of his students got into it: by wanting to be like their swimmer siblings. ""It's still the most effective way to recruit,'' he says.

Barry's parents both played a role in the development of his obsession for fitness … his mother was an ice skater, and his father managed the Harvard lacrosse team in the 1950s … but neither was interested in swimming. His sister enjoyed swimming, and her interest rubbed off on him.

He captained the Ridge High School swim team in 1981 and 1982, and the team won the state title in 1982. Under Barry's direction, the team also ""won the county championship, like, every year,'' he said. His team would double or even triple the scores of the runner-up team in a competition, he added.

At the Somerset Hills YMCA, Barry is looking to develop more swimmers with the same mentality and athletic dominance.

"I love the job, but that doesn't mean that I sometimes don't ask myself why I do this,'' said Barry, noting that coaching alone doesn't pay much and that balancing it with his marriage, fatherhood … he has two children, Mackenzie, 11, and Christopher, 14 … and his day job as a residential designer is very exhausting.

"But I love knowing that I'm working with tomorrow's future,'' he said. ""The kids I teach and coach make the job's demand worthwhile.''

His students appreciate his sacrifice and hard work, too.

"He's the type of coach that helps with everything, not just swimming,'' said Mary deMarrais, a 17-year-old junior at Bernards High School who said Barry also coached her two older sisters. "He's so much fun to be around with, I sometimes find myself getting to practice early just to hang out with him and help him coach the younger swimmers. And sometimes when I'm out for a run, I'll pass by his house quickly to say hello. He's like a second dad to me.''

Barry, who coaches "literally, no joke, every day'' from October to April and travels each weekend from February to March, says that being part of a swim team is more than how many laps one swimmer can do and in how little time. It's also about being social and active, he
emphasizes.

"Judging by what I see on a yearly basis, it seems as if they do it for the same reasons I do: it's fun, social and a great bonding experience,'' he said. ""It may sound like a wimpy explanation but it's true. We all love it. I may have to balance a million things at once to do this job, but hey, as least I enjoy it. Most people cannot say that about their job.''