By Rita Mingo

Swimming is all about timing.

Ed Garcia knows timing better than most.

Garcia, who has worked with computers for much of his life, is charged with videotaping races and making sure equipment around the pool is in tip-top shape.

It’s his expertise and commitment to the job that earned him Swim Canada’s Volunteer of the Year award for 2021.

“It is a strange thing,” admitted Garcia. “We concentrate on what we’re doing so the awards are not as important as the work you’re supposed to be doing. It’s like when my daughter was swimming – she’s in university now – I didn’t really see her because I was concentrating on what I was doing.

“Most of my work now for Swim Ontario and Swimming Canada is in the control room. I am an official and I know what needs to be done to do the job right. So you do that and forget about everything else really.”

Garcia, who has been a volunteer in the sport for roughly a dozen years, is really the perfect man for the job.

“I’ve worked for 45 years in computers so when the high-speed system came along, I was already working on the quantum side of things,” he explained. “My expertise allows me to do that kind of work. It fell into my lap, if you will, a product of being at the right place at the right time, I suppose.

“At the beginning, I wouldn’t call it volunteering because if you have a kid in swimming, you’re expected to officiate. That’s part of the price. So you become a volunteer when your kid is no longer swimming. “

Garcia drives 50 kilometres from his home in Bowmanville, east of Oshawa, to the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre for major swimming competitions.

“I check basically everything in the pool,” he described. “Once I got that set down, I basically am ready for the races. I record the races; if somebody needs a back-up time, I look at the camera and I provide the time. I make sure the software is up to date, that there are no compatibility issues with other parts of the system. I work in very close collaboration with the people at TPASC; I learn a lot from them and they learn from me. We work well together.

“It’s a critical thing. I’m sure other people can do it as well; it’s not rocket science at the end of the day. It’s a lot of fun; I enjoy it. It’s a high-stress environment, but it’s a pile of fun.”

Certainly, during easing of pandemic restrictions, the work that Garcia does really came to the fore.

“We were trying to reduce the number of people on deck so high-speed video became absolutely crucial,” he pointed out. “That brought it forward even more because you cannot have timers on the deck so it boils down to getting the timing from video. You don’t have any margin of error in that job; you’d better get it right. The things you have to deal with, like officials walking in front of you so that you cannot see the water, things like that.

“But we somehow manage because it’s not a one-person thing. It’s a team thing. Everybody talks to everybody and we all understand each other’s needs. We all work together.”

The future will continue to see Garcia in this important job, though he’s happy to share his expertise with others.

“I am looking forward to the big events but I’m also looking forward to training other people to be able to do what I do,” he said. “The reality is nobody lives forever; we would like continuity. So that’s also a focus for me, identifying potential people who could actually take over.

“Kids today are sort of born with that knowledge.”