Fortunate Wood has healthy shot at records

Jeff DiVeronica
Staff writer

(March 4, 2005) — Fairport's Jeff Wood is the only Section V swimmer who will defend an individual event title in this weekend's Class A state championships on Long Island. He won the 100-yard backstroke last March.

But 15 months ago, just living and breathing were a lot more important to Wood than swimming.

Wood broke a rib and suffered a semi-collapsed lung after a sledding accident in December 2003, or about 2 ½ months before his remarkable

recovery to not only qualify for states, but win the backstroke.

After he emerged from the pool, Wood remembers his mother's face. Terri Wood's eyes were as wet as the pool. Not only was her son healthy again, but he was a state champion.

"I was pretty happy and considering what I had been through, it was pretty emotional," Jeff recalls. "My family was real supportive (during rehabilitation) and so were my coaches and team. They fed me so much positive encouragement that it made me believe I could come back."

The senior is headed back to the state meet for a fifth straight year and this time he has his goggles focused on breaking two state records and maybe even a third if Fairport's 200 medley relay can win a fourth straight title and top its 2003 record time of 1 minute, 35.06 seconds.

Wood has posted the state's fastest time this winter in the backstroke (50.46 seconds) and 200 freestyle (1:41.15). He recorded those nearly two weeks ago while winning sectional titles in each event and before tapering his workouts and shaving his body to trim his times.

He is just .34 off the 10-year-old backstroke record and 1:38 off the 20-year-old 200 free mark.

He also is on Fairport's 400 freestyle relay team. Wood and his best friend, Pittsford standout Brian Possee, will go head to head after that 200 free record.

"We constantly push ourselves to get to the next level," Wood said of his fellow F.A.S.T. club team member. "The only time we're not friends is that minute and 40 seconds we race each other. I know I've been eyeing those (two) records since I moved to Fairport."

Jeff says his parents, Jim and Terri, sat their children down when Jeff was in eighth grade and asked them if they thought moving from Newark would provide them better academic and athletic opportunities. Jeff's older brother, Jim Wood Jr., and sister Jenna, an eighth-grader, also were swimmers. They settled on Fairport, which has a strong reputation in academics and swimming.

"Jeff's very considerate to his peers. I don't think he views himself as a star swimmer,'' Red Raiders coach Mike Kennedy says of the Indiana University-bound Wood, 18. "I know his peers respect that and how he represents himself in the classroom and socially."

Their friendship showed after the sledding accident. After being bed-ridden for nearly two weeks, his friends pushed him around in a wheelchair for the next three at school. Wood couldn't walk much "because I'd be outta breath,'' he says.

But he knew he was fortunate.

The accident happened in front of his parents' home. Jeff was going to walk his girlfriend out to her van and noticed the family's steep driveway was a sheet of ice. Rather than risk slipping down that, he thought sledding down the front lawn in an inner tube would be easier. He had watched his sister do that earlier in the afternoon.

But with his girlfriend on his lap, the tube veered off the path in the snow and headed for the van parked in the road. "I put my foot down to try to slow us down and it turned the tube sideways,'' Wood remembers.

They narrowly missed smacking the side of the van, but Wood's body slammed into the vehicle's trailer hitch.

His girlfriend was shaken up and ran to the house for help. An ambulance rushed Wood to the hospital.

"I got lucky. It almost hit my spleen,'' he says.

Wood worked his way back slowly and knew if he felt OK his times would probably be good enough to earn a trip to states.

"To win at states after seven weeks of training. That's pretty impressive," Kennedy says.

In addition to the backstroke and medley relay, Wood swam a leg of the winning 200 freestyle relay. He was also on two winning relays as a sophomore, including the medley with brother Jim and on the winning medley relay as a freshman. While at Newark in eighth grade, he qualified for the state finals in the 500 freestyle.

And now this weekend it ends, hopefully in record-breaking style.

He already has recorded 17 times good enough to qualify him as an All-American. Wood visited Georgia Tech, Tennessee and Virginia Tech, but has chosen NCAA power Indiana.

The water in the pool this weekend feels so far removed from that cold December day 15 months ago when everything almost ended for him.

"I feel grateful that I'm able to swim,'' Wood says. "And really, I feel lucky to be alive.''

Originally published in the Democrat and Chronicle

Pertinent Links
2005 Team
State Meet

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