Swimming coach Franke Bell honored for coaching generations of Charlotte kids

Franke Bell was never supposed to be a swim coach.

As a child, she didn’t compete on a team.

At the University of North Carolina, her adviser said she was not cut out for recreation-type work. “You have absolutely no personality at all,” she recalls him telling her. His recommendation: a career in lab research.

But in 1958, when she got a job at the Johnston Memorial YMCA, children of mill workers insisted she create a team for them so they could race more well-off kids in other parts of Charlotte.

“You can learn with us,” they said.

Turns out, they were right.

Bell, 83, will be inducted this month into the International Swim Coaches Association Hall of Fame in the group’s first class. She’ll be in good company alongside top national coaches Eddie Reese and Dick Jochums.

She learned enough since that first dip into swimming in north Charlotte to help send Mel Stewart, her most accomplished swimmer, to two Olympic games. In 1992, Stewart won two gold medals and one bronze.

Not all were so swift, though, and in them she sees her broader legacy – rehabilitating disabled kids in the pool, helping raise children while their parents worked second shift and pushing countless others to reach their potential.

Asked to summarize her coaching philosophy, Bell – who still coaches part time at the Aquatic Team of Mecklenburg – recites what she always told her swimmers:

“Nobody on this team will grow up to be an average person. You don’t have to try hard to fit in when you were made to stand out.”

Accolades

▪ A rare head female coach at the time, Bell traveled with coaches as a representative for Swimming World Magazine to the 1964 and 1968 Olympics.

▪ Bell was nominated to the coaching staff for the Pan American Games three times.

▪ Her success at Johnston Memorial Y led to numerous N.C. Coach of the Year Awards, eventually having the yearly award named in her honor. In 1989, she was inducted into the North Carolina Swimming Hall of Fame.

Innovator

▪ With no swimming background and the sport in its infancy, Bell read books on track conditioning to design workouts. She studied the shape of boats to learn how to help swimmers get rid of resistance by angling their body into the shape of the hull of a racing boat.

▪ She experimented with equipment to help young athletes learn proper technique. One of her innovations, to have a backstroker balance a soda can on the forehead, is a drill that’s become standard across the world.

Bell’s Angels

The team wanted a nickname in the spirit of other national teams that often incorporated their coach’s name. “We’re gonna look tough,” Bell recalls the boys saying. What’s tougher than a motorcycle gang? And so, “Bell’s Angels” was born.

It’s printed on T-shirts, but you can’t buy one. “You have to earn it,” Bell says. “Double practices the entire summer.”

This story was originally published August 14, 2015 at 5:17 PM with the headline "Swimming coach Franke Bell honored for coaching generations of Charlotte kids."