Tom Robinson

Thomas H. Robinson (August 18, 1882 – August 11, 1958) served 35 years as Northwestern University's first swimming and diving coach from 1909 to 1944. During his coaching tenure, his teams won 10 Big Ten Conference Championships, and 6 NCAA Championships. With multiple responsibilities, his teams won seven water polo championships during his time at Northwestern, and he served briefly as basketball coach in 1919. He placed eleven of his swimmers, divers, and water polo players on Olympic teams, and was made a member of both the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965 and the American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCAA) Hall of Fame.

Robinson was born on August 18, 1882, in Denmark.

Northwestern University Robinson coached swimming at the Evanston YMCA as early as 1907.

Robinson won his first Big Ten conference championship in 1914 and continued to win consecutive conference championships through 1918. He captured additional championships in 1920, 23, 24, 25, and 1930. He captured his first NCAA Championship in 1924 at Scott Natatorium in Annapolis, Maryland, the first year of the NCAA national tournament, where his swimmers Ralph Breyer, and Dick Howell won the 100, 200, 400, and 1500 freestyle events. He won additional titles in 1925, 1928, 1930, and 1933. While at Northwestern, he also won seven water polo championships under his tenure, and three water basketball championships, a game Robinson helped develop, but which fell out of favor by 1924. In 1920, Robinson established and set up the first women’s Red Cross Lifesaving Program. Robinson was presented with a silver service set, and a plaque that was placed at the entrance to the Northwestern pool that commemorated his silver anniversary.

Water basketball inventor In his earliest year of coaching, in 1907 Robinson invented Water Basketball while serving at the Evanston YMCA. During initial years at Northwestern, water basketball participation grew from Chicago to much of the Midwest and eventually nationwide. Athletic clubs in Chicago became the earliest to take up the new sport. Robinson began to stage water basketball opening games before Big Ten swimming events at Northwestern, exhibiting the new sport to other teams.

Outstanding swimmers coached Among Robinson's most outstanding swimmers were 1924 Olympians Dick Howell, Ralph Breyer, and gold medalists Robert Skelton, and Sybil Bauer. Other Olympians he mentored and trained included 1928 Olympians Harry C. Daniels, a water polo player and swimmer, Walter Colbath, and 1932 Olympic gold medalist Al Schwartz. He later coached 1936 Olympic freestyle participant Art Highland, and 1936 Olympic trial qualifier Volney Wilson, a physics student who helped evolve the butterfly stroke to include the dolphin kick. He also coached 1932 Olympic freestyle participant Dan Zehr.

He retired from coaching at Northwestern in 1944. In his retirement, he coached for a few years as a volunteer at North Park Pool. He later coached at Elgin Pool, and served as a swimming instructor at Barrington Hills. He died on August 12, 1958, at the Lake County Tuberculosis sanatorium, in Waukegan, Illinois and was survived by his wife, a daughter and a son. He had been in ill health for around six months, since February, 1958. Services were held at the Barrington Methodist Church on August 14.