Description:
Born in 1948, Sue Pitt Anderson grew up in Highland Park, New Jersey. Her father, Larry Pitt, graduated from Rutgers in 1939 and went on to become the broadcaster for Rutgers football games and a Rutgers Athletic Hall of Famer. Her mother taught elementary school in Highland Park.
Anderson began competitive swimming at the age of eleven and trained at the Summit Y with Frank Elm and later with the Scarlet Jets. In 1963, she set a world record in the 200-meter butterfly. She went on to set several more records, including the world record in the 220-yard butterfly in 1965. She competed in the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964. She swam in the preliminaries of the 4x100-meter medley relay, in which the U.S. went on to win gold. In 1965, she was selected as "High School Athlete of the Year," although she, as a young woman, could not attend the awards dinner. In 1966, she traveled with an American swim team and competed in swim meets in Warsaw and Moscow. With few options available to women to swim in college before Title IX, Anderson retired from swimming. She attended the University of Vermont. In part one, she discusses the opportunities afforded to female athletes after the passage of Title IX.
(Part Two) She came out of retirement and made the U.S. Olympic Team in 1968. She served as the co-captain of the U.S. Women's Swimming Team but did not compete in the Mexico City Summer Games. She transferred to Douglass College, where she majored in political science. From 1970 to 1972, she served in the Peace Corps in Tunisia developing the national youth swim program.
She went on to a career as a swim coach. She coached the Scarlet Jets and assistant coached the men's and women's teams at Rutgers. After coaching a local Y team, she founded and served as the head coach of the Scarlet Aquatic Club. She then worked at USA Swimming as a regional coordinator and Programs and Services Director.
