ATHENS, Ga. -- Sonny Smart remembers taking his youngest son, Kirby, to the city pool in Bainbridge, Georgia, in the summer of 1983.
Kirby, only 7 years old, was trying out for the Bainbridge Barracudas swim team. There was just one requirement to make it: A child had to swim the length of the pool without stopping. No matter how hard Kirby tried that first day, he couldn't do it.
"He didn't know how to swim and breathe," said Sonny Smart, a longtime high school football coach in Alabama and Georgia. "He'd swim as far as he could and he'd stop and grab the rope, take a breath and go on.