Water’s a Bond for Westbrook Swimmers

Early in this high school swim season, when Marcus Ziemann and his parents were trying to figure out why his right arm would swell up and turn purple and red, a doctor advised him to get out of the water, to never swim again. What the well-meaning physician didn’t realize is that Marcus needed the water. Long before this setback, the pool was his refuge, the endless laps his therapy.

His teammates at Westbrook High understand. When the Blue Blazes compete today and Tuesday in the Class A swimming and diving championships at Bowdoin College’s Gleason Pool, it will mark the culmination of two turbulent years marred by three tragic deaths, the first involving Marcus’ younger brother in a boating accident.

This is a story about healing, about a group of young athletes who found solace in chlorinated water, staring at wobbly black lines at the bottom of a swimming pool as they concentrated on reaching out, pulling themselves forward, and taking another breath. Reach, move, breathe.

Their pain began in water. Through water, they learn to heal.

"You just have to keep going on," Ziemann said quietly. "There’s no point not to."

DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES

Ziemann is a studious senior who keeps mostly to himself and reads half a dozen books concurrently. He plowed through "War and Peace" the summer before eighth grade and reads Goethe and Dostoevsky for pleasure.

He has taken a calculus class at the University of Southern Maine and is currently enrolled in a Latin and Greek class at St. Joseph’s College.

He plans on studying classics in college, likely at an Ivy League institution, with an eye toward medicine.

In the car, he prefers the radio tuned to the classical station. At a swim meet, you’re as likely to find him in a corner with a novel as in the water.

Not so with his younger brother, Jared. The bubbliest of Melissa and Van Ziemann’s two children, Jared had his grandfather’s brown eyes and his outgoing Armenian appeal.

Melissa, who later became a substitute teacher in the Westbrook school system, is the oldest of six kids, and by fourth grade had assumed the role of caretaker when her mom returned to college. Van, who grew up in California, is one of seven children.

Jared kept journals. He wrote poems. He and Van shared a coin collection. Each spring they planted a garden near a line of evergreens behind their neat brown house on Alberta Drive.

"And Jared wouldn’t just say, ‘Let’s go plant,’ " Melissa said. "It was ‘Let’s go weed. Let’s go pick up the yard.’ "

She enrolled her boys in swimming lessons. Not for competition, but because "I wanted my children to always be safe in the water."

They joined the Westbrook Seals swim club and learned to enjoy testing themselves against the clock. In the eyes of Seals Coach Rocco Aceto, Jared was the pudgy kid who often got calf cramps during workouts, a "bubbly-smile kid who, at such a young age, was able to brighten up people’s days just by his presence."

Marcus, nearly three years older, was bigger and stronger and smarter. Coachable, but Aceto tended more toward video than verbal instruction.

"Marcus has two speeds: all-out and nothing," Aceto said. "He’s classic fast-twitch mesomorph body type, very involved intellectually. Jared was more the right-brain artsy type."

COMMUNITY DEALS WITH DEATH

The accident happened on the second day of August 2003 during a group outing at the family camp of a Seals teammate on the western shore of Sebago Lake. Five teenagers on two engine-powered personal watercraft, a green Sea-Doo and a red Polaris.

Marcus steered the Sea-Doo with Jared, who fell into the water during a sharp turn. Two boys and a girl followed on the Polaris, and none saw Jared fall.

The Polaris ran him over. Less than four hours later, Jared died at Maine Medical Center from massive trauma to his head.

"Neither operator was going excessively fast or operating in a manner that contributed to the accident," concluded Jason S. Luce of the Maine Warden Service in his report.

The outpouring of support at Jared’s funeral and memorial service was enormous.

"It was very, very moving because I knew we were in a community that loved and cared for my boys," Melissa said. "That was very, very important to us, that we didn’t have to say goodbye alone."

Sadly, before a year had passed, Westbrook’s close-knit school community would say goodbye twice more. Last January 12-year-old Daniel Kelly died after a two-year fight with cancer. Last February cancer also claimed the life of 46-year-old elementary school teacher Linda Loven.

Her youngest son, Tom Loven, and Kaila Kelly, Daniel’s sister, are teammates with Marcus on the Westbrook High swim team, as is Matt Violette, who was on the red Polaris that day in Wards Cove.

All four will be swimming in the Class A state championships today, for girls, and Tuesday, for boys.

"This whole team is so supportive," said Kelly, a junior who, on the Monday her brother died, opted to attend swim practice at Davan Pool so she could be with her friends.

"I was wicked mad," she said, "and it helped to get my energy out. I couldn’t stand being around the house. It was really comfortable here. In swimming you can keep your head down and you don’t have to think of anything."

"It’s a place," said Loven, a senior, "where you can work and forget about stuff."

"Exercising is a trigger to release stress and to emotionally calm down," said Violette, a sophomore who still struggles with the aftermath of Jared’s death. "But sometimes it can be difficult, because the accident was in the water."

A PLACE FOR COMFORT

The Blue Blazes were not a threat to win a state title last year and they are not going to be in contention this year.

Coach Rob Card has tried to create a safe haven where swimmers will be both challenged and nurtured, and not asked to bare their souls.

"It made me feel good that they’re comfortable coming to the pool and hanging out," he said. "I’m there for the kids. If they want time (off), they can take it. The team gets along great."

If Marcus was hoping to breathe a little easier his senior year, soccer tryouts soon proved him otherwise.

Although as a freshman he had reached the state finals in high school swimming’s longest event, the 500-yard freestyle, endurance had never been his forte. He was a sprinter, through and through.

Even so, he seemed to be getting winded easily and had difficulty breathing. He crossed soccer off his list and looked ahead to swim season.

"I thought I was just out of shape," he said.

Early in the school year, during his chemistry class, Marcus noticed his right arm had puffed up and turned a reddish-purple, with a bruise on his shoulder. Funny, he didn’t remember bumping it or injuring it in any way.

In early October he checked into Maine Medical Center for a series of tests. Eventually a doctor discovered blood clots from Marcus’s arm had showered into his lungs, creating a life- threatening condition called pulmonary embolism.

"Almost all of the lobes of my lungs were filled with blood clots," he said. "The doctor said I used up one of my nine lives."

Marcus stopped swimming, then returned to the pool in mid- November.

A month later a specialist in Boston finally figured out the cause: a rare condition called Paget-Schroetter Syndrome in which a vein between the collarbone and first rib gets squeezed, perhaps due to overexertion and overdevelopment of neck and shoulder muscles, and creates a dam.

Once more Marcus avoided the water. With his workouts disappearing and his diet remaining constant, he added 25 pounds to his 5-foot-10 frame and has bulked up to 185.

Look closely at his belly and you’ll see small yellow bruises from the daily injections of blood thinner he administers. These have allowed him to swim again. An operation to remove his rib is scheduled for early March.

With only a week of practice, Marcus swam the 50 freestyle in 24.19 seconds at last weekend’s Southwesterns, about a second slower than his best time, but impressive nonetheless.

He tried the 100 free and ran out of gas. He also anchored the 200 free relay, swimming his leg in 23.55 seconds.

"For his senior year, his last time swimming competitively at Davan Pool, he had a great meet," Card said. "He’s having a lot of fun with the team this year, laughing a lot. It’s a great bunch of kids."

At the beginning of the year, Marcus was hoping to place among the top three at Tuesday’s state meet. Now he simply hopes, for a fourth consecutive year, to qualify for the evening finals.

Without the endurance necessary for a longer event, he will swim the 50 free and a relay leg. One race for himself, one race for his team.

Hard to imagine that anywhere in Orono or Brunswick will these state championship meets be placed in better perspective than within the Westbrook High School swim team.

Aceto, the Seals’ coach, never taught chemistry, but he understands something of the power within two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.

"Water," he said, "is the way we all bond. It brings us together. It’s a way we stay together."

At the tearful insistence of Marcus, his parents agreed to donate Jared’s organs. His pancreas lives on in his uncle. His heart beats within a young mother.

And inside every Westbrook swimmer there is a piece of Jared Ziemann, a piece of Linda Loven and a piece of Daniel Kelly.

How could there not be?

Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be

contacted at 791-6425 or at:

gjordan@pressherald.com