Courtesy: Charles Hartley
You could search all you want through Olympic swimming history and not find one grade school anywhere that has produced two two-time Olympic swimmers.
Except one: Little Flower in Bethesda, Maryland where I went to school and flamed out as an athlete at 14 circa 100 years ago.
Last night Little Flower prodigy Phoebe “Phenom” Bacon qualified for the team in the 200-meter background as she did in the Tokyo Games in 2021. She will be joining Katie Summer Ledecky, the Sultan of Swimming, on the team this summer.
Where we come from in Bethesda, Maryland, we Little Flower-ites like to call this Little Flower Power.
Bacon and Ledecky are the most famous athletes from the school but there have been an avalanche of other athletes worth mentioning such as:
Peyton Cross, Class of ’77, who won the three-jetty run in the Bethany Beach Lifeguard Olympics from 1974-77;
Rudy Miller, Class of ’77, who has been playing in a men’s hoops league every Saturday morning for 43 straight years in Baltimore stench gyms and along the way has broken the all-time record for total turnovers in any basketball league anywhere;
Billy Frietag, Class of ’75, who held Quentin Daily to 39 points in two and a half quarters his senior year of high school; and
Charles Hartley, Class of ’77, who in seventh grade tried a flip turn doing the backstroke in the relay carnival at the Rockville Municipal Swim Center but didn’t execute it the right way, costing his relay team eight extra seconds.
All of which is proof positive that Little Flower Power is a real thing – not just a catchy slogan. The world is now seeing the monumental accomplishments of Phoebe Bacon, and the Sultan of Swimming, Summer Ledecky, but should also be cognizant of the many accomplishments of its legions of esteemed graduates.
About Charles Hartley
Charles Hartley is a freelance writer based in Davidson, NC. He has a masters degree in journalism and a masters degree in business administration.
