Former UNLV swim coach Jim Reitz recalls young Michael Phelps

When we spoke on Tuesday, Jim Reitz was back on the deck at Buchanan Natatorium, the UNLV swimming pool. Turns out that retirement thing hasn’t taken very well.

Yes, he got the 16-foot Boston Whaler that had been sitting in his garage running on Lake Mead. He took it out a bunch of times. It still wasn’t enough to “stay engaged” after 35 years as UNLV’s swimming coach.

So, on Tuesday he was coaching a couple of masters swimmers, part of a fledgling lunchtime program at UNLV. One, a wounded warrior injured in Afghanistan, hopes to make it to the Paralympics.

“We’ve got to get him a lift so he can get in and out of the pool,” Reitz said.

Reitz said his respiratory problems have cleared up a bunch. At 66, he is coaching Olympic hopefuls again. Perhaps that is how it should be.

I had called to chat about an Olympic swimmer of another ilk. Of another stratosphere. The most decorated swimmer in Olympic history, the one with 23 gold medals, and 28 medals altogether — a swimmer more exalted than Johnny Weissmuller and Aquaman morphed into one.

Jim Reitz has a bit of a history with Michael Phelps.

The first time he laid eyes on him was in Baltimore, when Phelps was 12 or 13. This was when Reitz was recruiting Michael’s sister, Whitney, to swim at UNLV. Michael never left the house, Reitz recalled.

“I think it must have been the third time that summer he was grounded,” Reitz said of Michael Phelps’ mischievousness. “He was just a kid goofing off.”

Whitney Phelps was looking for a second chance, and a chance to get a college education.

“When Whitney was 13, she had injured her back in competition … or she might have been as famous as Michael,” Reitz said.

That’s how he was able to recruit Michael Phelps’ sister. Her biography in the UNLV media guide said she had a brother. It didn’t mention him by name.

Before her back injury flared up, Whitney Phelps won the Mountain West Conference championship in the 200 butterfly in 2000.

When she had to retire again, Reitz honored her scholarship and made her an assistant coach so she could finish her studies. Like most who swam for him, they carried on a post-UNLV relationship.

This is how it came to be that long after he was exalted, and he would be hanging out in Las Vegas with his buddies, Michael Phelps would call Reitz and ask if he could work out in the UNLV pool, sort of on the down low. He would show up with little fanfare. The Rebels swimmers would have “google eyes.”

“He and his sister both had the motor of a Mack truck,” Reitz said. “They both had extremely big motors, and he was able to sustain it over a number of years.”

Will we ever see another swimmer like Michael Phelps?

Not likely, Jim Reitz said. But one never says never. One might have said never during Mark Spitz’s day, and then along came Michael Phelps.

But Spitz won “only” nine Olympic gold medals, along with a silver and a bronze. He could carry most of his precious metal around in a jewelry box. Phelps would need a Ford Econoline to cart his around.

“It’s extraordinarily difficult to sustain that level and work so hard over that period of time,” Reitz said.

Reitz called it “reinventing the paradigm.”

When Michael Phelps’ buddies were partying in Las Vegas, he was using the UNLV pool. OK, so he might have partied a little, too. (You might have seen the pictures on social media.) But when it came to start training seriously and the alarm went off, Michael Phelps never pushed the snooze button.

His dedication was just as impressive as his wingspan and his talent, and that is what set him apart from other world class swimmers.

Even if it was by fractions of seconds, over the long haul — 16 years of Olympics and World Championships and Pan-Pacific Championships and World Aquatic Championships and engaging neighborhood kids in Marco Polo in the shallow end of the pool — that is why Michael Phelps will stand alone, Reitz said. And that is why Aquaman and Tarzan and Mark Spitz will forever swim in his wake.

“I don’t think we’ll see another one like him. Certainly I won’t. Maybe ever.”

Jim Reitz was speaking on his cellphone. You could hear a couple of masters swimmers splashing toward the deep end, the way Michael Phelps must have done it a million times, although probably with a lot less effort.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski