Willim J. Brooks was a sophomore at Rider College in Trenton, N.J., in 1929 and what he terms "just an A.A.U. swimmer," when the 600-student school was persuaded to start a swimming team. Brooks turned professional and became its first coach.

He hasn't left the poolside since, which is why he will join Ohio State's Mike Poppe this spring in receiving from the Coaching Association the award varsity coach Hal Ulen got last year for 25 years of service.

Also like Ulen, Bill Brooks, now coach of the Crimson freshmen, is one of the greatest swimming teachers of the times.

Brooks work has not only been long; it has been good. He developed divers Francis Gosling and Michael Johnson, sending the former to the Olympics in 1948 and both of them to the Games in '52. In fact, when he turned out William Gaskill, Frank Sheridan, and Bernard Kelly, all of whom hit stardom off the board, he became known as one of the country's best diving coaches.

Almost as if to prove his versatility, Brooks showed he was as good or better a producer of swimmers. Of the five major U.S. swimming awards, the president's Cup and the Vanderbilt Trophy are the highest. Dave Rowan of Rider won the first one over the Potomac River course in 1935, and Irwin Goodman took the second, to bring both of them home to Brooks.

Breaststorke Specialist

While turning out National Junior free style and backstroke champions, Brooks nevertheless seems to have specialized in the orthodox breaststroke.

Rider's Percy Belvin set the British mark of 2:27.8 at the Empire Games in Australia, but Leonard Spence, who swam on the U.S. Olympic team in 1936, set the world record in 2:25 flat. As a sidelight, Brooks also coached Elsie Petri, the girl who held the women's world 500 and 600-yard breaststroke marks.

Swimming became a major sport at Rider, and Rider's swimming team began to have major effects. It left its normal class and took on the powers. The only squad in history to beat Yale in all four individual free style events at New Haven was the 1937-38 team coached by Brooks.

But after ten years at Rider, Brooks left in 1939 for the Women's City Club of Detroit. He remained there through the war, but when the University of Detroit revived it athletic program in 1945, Brooks moved over into its coaching berth and compiled a 7-1 record.

Meanwhile, in Cambridge. Hal Ulen was looking for someone to help him with the swimming program that had started up again here. He invited Brooks down in the fall of 1946, and Brooks in six years has become an irreplaceable fixture.

Brooks is a soft-spoken coach. His interest in his boys and his concerned attentiveness in working out not only their swimming but all their other problems has won him high devotion at the I.A.B. pool.

He doesn't hide any pride over his swimmers' accomplishments, such as the 1:35.1 200-yard free style relay his freshmen swam into the Crimson records last year. But it is always pride over what they did and when they won, how they won. When his charges lose, Brooks whispers sorrowfully in your ear. "They tried awful hard, they tried their darndest, but we lost." In losing, it's always "we".

For this reason, his teams and fellow coaches swear by him. As Ulen put it, "Bill can take the worst swimmer in the world, put his arm around him, talk to him, and convince him he should be in the Olympics."

Perhaps this is because Brooks is an Olympic coach. For 14 years he was official swimming coach for the Bermuda Athletic Association, and as such he took teams to Berlin in 1936, London in 1948, and Helsinki in 1952.

Since his wife's illness, Brooks has confined his work to Cambridge. He idolizes Ulen ("He's the real coach, not the guy who gets the ready-made swimmers,") and though he could be a varsity coach almost anywhere he chose to go, he wants to stay with him.

Ulen, on his part, does not know of a finer man than Brooks. "He's no hot-shot rah-rah guy--he's a solid, patient, teaching coach. There isn't a better man to take over this varsity when the retirement rules get me. Bill's a gentleman, and he knows hs onions."