Aug. 19, 2017
ATLANTA, Ga. – Former Georgia Tech head swimming coach Fred R. Lanoue, who coached the Yellow Jackets for 27 years, was inducted into the Georgia Aquatic Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2017 on Saturday night at the induction banquet held at the Atlanta Athletic Club.
Lanoue (Posthumous Inductee) was inducted as part of the class of 2017 along with fellow honorees Dan Laak (Diving), Paige Wilson Penze (Swimming), Elizabeth Hill Newman (Swimming) and Sabir Muhammad (Swimming).
“I would like to thank the board members of the Georgia Aquatic Hall of Fame for recognizing and honoring Coach Lanoue for all that he did not only as a swim coach at Georgia Tech, but also realizing the impact he had on so many lives in teaching `drownproofing’ to Tech students,” stated Georgia Tech swimming & diving head coach and Georgia Aquatic Hall of Fame member (2012) Courtney Shealy Hart.
A two-time Tech graduate and former swimmer Patrick McKeown (AE, 1965; M.S IM 1967), Professor Emeritus and former Head of the Department of Management Information Systems at the University of Georgia, not only attended the induction ceremony on Saturday night, but also provided a video message of fond stories of Coach Lanoue and discussed the impact that he had on his own life as a young Tech student in the 1960’s.
A graduate of Springfield College and a former New England diving champion, Lanoue began working with Tech swimmers in 1936 and became the Yellow Jackets’ full-time head coach in 1938 when the Georgia Tech pool was completed.
Under Lanoue’s guidance, Tech won four Southeastern Conference (SEC) Championships in nine years, the first in 1942 and then three in a row in 1948, 1949 and 1950.
Lanoue, who coached the Yellow Jackets for 27 years before his passing in 1965, is also in the Springfield College Hall of Fame, the Georgia Tech Sports Hall of Fame and the Helms Foundation Hall of Fame.
An innovator, Lanoue was also a professor at Georgia Tech where he developed and taught `drownproofing’ which was a prerequisite to graduate from Georgia Tech up until the summer of 1987.
The water survival technique has been adopted by the US Navy in its training.
For more on the Georgia Aquatic Hall of Fame visit: http://gahof.org/.
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