Two Father-Daughter Duos Enjoy Summer Nationals

Most Masters swimmers know you can engage with this sport at any age. But for some, it’s become a special way to connect across generations.

Such is the case for Ojai Masters’ David Rasch, 71, and Arizona Masters’ Jim Lavery, 69, and their daughters, Rose Bowl Masters’ Meehan Rasch, 46, and Dolphins of the Desert Masters’ Kiely Lavery, 38. They all competed at the 2024 U.S. Masters Swimming Summer National Championship in Mission Viejo, California.

Meehan Rasch credits her father with getting her into swimming originally.

“He and all his siblings were swimmers, as were my grandparents, so we’re a multi-generational swimming family,” she says.

As a kid, she swam with Palo Alto Swim Club and her high school team. She left the sport after graduation as other interests took center stage.

But always a swimmer at heart, she found her way back to the pool about six years ago when she began swimming with a Masters group in Los Angles. She soon persuaded her father to join her.

She’s since moved to Pasadena but says the pair continue to inspire each other to keep swimming.

“It’s been so fun,” Meehan Rasch says. “Seeing the joy that he’s had over the past several years of being back in competition and training—I hope to be doing the same for years when I’m his age and beyond. It’s really neat to be able to connect as a family in this way and have him cheer me on. Having this way to get together, to travel tougher and keep supporting each other’s fitness and competitive career, is really fun.”

David Rasch agrees that it’s been a special experience to share with his daughter: “She grew up swimming, so it’s a very familiar kind of thing for us to be at a swim meet and to share the swimming.”

What’s more, getting back into swimming has “just been fantastic for my overall health. I swam as a young person and I get active by competition. Even though I’m 71 years old now, you kind of click into that same mindset you had when you were 15. It’s a great motivator to keep me doing the practicing and the exercise, which is really great for sure.”

The Laverys enjoyed their first time competing at the same meet, though, like the Rasches, the pair have worked together to achieve swimming success.

Jim Lavery coached his daughter in high school, who scooped up seven state championships, he says.

But Kiely Lavery took a 20-year hiatus from competitive swimming after briefly competing at the University of Alabama.

But recently “she just decided to get back into competitive swimming, so she swam the Arizona state meet a couple months ago and qualified in five out of six events to go to Nationals,” her dad says. “And here we are!”

Kiely Lavery now works as a nutritionist at Miraval Resorts in Tucson, Arizona, and has a private nutritional practice.

Jim Lavery works in commercial real estate. He took up swimming in the early 1970s while growing up in Indiana when Mark Spitz was training at the University of Indiana.

“That was kind of the inspiration,” Jim Lavery says. “Swimming became much more important during the 1972 Olympics,” and it became a lifelong passion for him that he hopes to continue pursing alongside his daughter.

“Somebody told me today, ‘I just saw a 99-year-old swimmer. Jim, you’ve got another 29 years of competition if you want to.’ This is a sport for life,” he says.