Virginia Smith has dedicated a large portion of her 53 years to swimming, first in Colorado where she swam with her four brothers and sisters, then at United States International University at San Diego, where she majored in psychology and minored in sociology and completed with the university swim team, a group she coached at age 20. The Denver-born Smith came to Canada to complete her psychology degree at Carleton University in Ottawa, and discovered Canadian swimming while life guarding at Ottawa-area lakes. Finally, she discovered Yarmouth and there begins a 30-year love affair with a town, its youth and a swim program that might not have existed for so long without her dedication, knowledge and leadership. Ginny was approached by then YMCA director Hugh Sproule to help coach the Y Whitecaps in 1971.

Two years later, she was asked to take over the program and naively, she says, she agreed. She’s given 30 years of her life to coaching hundreds of swimmers, some with national and international qualifications, but all with a love of the sport engendered by this woman who is enthusiastic about her sport, whether it’s very early in the morning, or on a Friday at 7 p.m. after she’s completed a long work week. Ginny Smith has coached Nova Scotia Canada Games teams, including being head swim coach at the just-completed Canada Summer Games in London, Ont., has been a workshop conductor at several national swim coaches conferences, has her Levels One through Three coaching certificates and is just completing her Level Four, the first female in Atlantic Canada to complete that level. Smith is an educator, working as a classroom teacher and as supervisor of special education in the Yarmouth District School Board. And she is a member of many professional organizations such as the Association of Teachers of Exceptional Children, the Canadian Association of Learning Disabilities, the Canadian Association of Special Educators, and the Canadian Council of Exceptional Children.

She is not only a swim coach. Ginny is an instructor in skin and SCUBA diving, a member of the Yarmouth Association of Community Residential Options, served on the board of Juniper House, a transition home for battered women, and has even been a day care worker, home counsellor and life guard. But it’s her loyalty to her swimmers, her dedication to their success, her goal of making swimming a marvelous experience, one that builds self-esteem and leadership, that makes Ginny Smith’s contribution to Nova Scotia sport deserving of recognition. Her son, Shannon, who swam for her and with her, sums up his mother this way. “She is a role model, not only as a swimmer and a coach, but as a humanitarian, a peer and, indeed as a mother. Any applause or accolades she has received are the results of a life dedicated to morality, hard work and a belief system rooted in the basic premise that mankind is good.”