Friday, March 13, 2026

Friday, March 13, 2026

Hello friends, family, and followers! This is Andy’s son, Alex, writing to you again today with another story about Daddio.

For those of you who don’t know me that well, I was a competitive swimmer from ages 8-22. And while I’m usually pretty humble about my abilities — since I always knew people that were faster than me — in high school swimming I was basically a god among men. 😁

My junior and senior years of high school was when my swimming career really took off. For some reason, the Hall-of-Fame head coach from Northwestern University, Bob Groseth, came to Libertyville High School to coach the men’s swim team. With Bob at the helm, we started dominating meets, and while that’s fun for the swimmers, I think the parents had the real fun with it.

Every dual meet was an event for the parents. The stands were always packed with our parents creating the atmosphere by cheering their heads off. And even though our dual meets were on Thursdays and my dad worked in Florida during the week, I don’t remember him ever missing one. As a kid I never gave it much thought, but as an adult I’ve looked back and realized how much effort it must have taken for him to make that work. Flights scheduled around my meet schedule, constant communication with his coworkers about where he’d be each week — or maybe he was just burning through his PTO? I’m sure I’ll get an answer after this post!

Although …. I can imagine how cool it is to see your son lap people in a 100 yard backstroke, so I’m sure it was all worth it 😁.

I’m not sure which parent my weird shoulders or other genetic anomalies came from, but I know without a doubt that my competitiveness was inherited from my dad. And while he was a very accomplished athlete — marathons, the Ironman — those aren’t really competitive sports.

During one of our family trips to Fence Lake, we were playing a game where you put a PVC pipe in the ground, place a beer bottle on top, and try to knock the bottle off with a frisbee. I forget the exact rules, but you get points for knocking the bottle off the pipe, and no points are awarded if your opponent catches the frisbee one-handed.

He was playing against my brother-in-law, Zack. I was coming up from the lake to grab a beer when I saw a blue blur fly through the air, followed by Zack shouting in pain as he tried and failed to catch it. I stuck around for a bit and watched as my dad and his son-in-law hurled this frisbee at each other as if they were trying to cause bodily harm. Neither of them was willing to lose. I’m not sure who won — I didn’t want to stick around and risk losing a finger. Maybe they were both winners in the spirit of competition? Maybe they were both losers based on the bruises on their hands?

I’m not sure what the point of this story is, especially since I didn’t compete? There are too many themes to sum this all up in one witty message, and I’ve already written too much to change that. My dad was competitive, and my sister married a guy who is equally competitive, I guess. At the very least, I take solace in knowing that if I gave both Zack and my dad the ability to travel back in time to their peak performing bodies, they still wouldn’t be able to beat me in a 100 free — even with them splitting it into a relay while I swim it straight.