FISU Technical Chair for Diving Receives Prestigious Award
December 17th, 2007
FISU Technical Chairman for Diving Donald Leas
Donald Leas (USA), the FISU Technical Chair for Diving, has received the Joseph G. Rogers Award, for dedication, accomplishment and excellence in YMCA Competitive Swimming and Diving. Mr. Leas has been involved for over 30 years with the management of the National YMCA Diving Championships. His involvement with swimming and diving at the YMCA dates all the way back to 1944 as a swimming and diving competitor. Leas’ participation in aquatics over the years has been extensive and varied. From a competitor through high school and University he held different coaching positions in several Universities. His coaching career blossomed at Clarion University in Pennsylvania were he produced 36 National Champions and 135 All-Americas in the sport of diving with two of his women divers going on to become members of three Olympic Teams.
The Joseph G. Rogers Award
In 1984 he was named NCAA Swimming Coach of the Year and in 1990 he was named NCAA Diving Coach of the Decade. He also managed the diving competition for the 1995 FINA World Cup and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. And this is only the tip of the ice berg of his involvement in diving, as no one has served in more capacities in the sport of diving in the USA than Donald Leas. Donald Leas has been the FISU Technical Chair for Diving since 1981.
This award was established in 1974 as recognition of long and exceptional leadership, insight, dedication and friendship by a man whose YMCA career has touched and enriched the lives of countless young people. In his lifetime, Joe Rogers was the first recipient of the National Distinguished Service to Aquatics Award, was the organizer of the National Operating Council on Aquatics and represented the YMCA on the US Olympic Men’s Swimming Committee. The Joseph G. Rogers Award statue is permanently located in the International Swimming Hall of Fame Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with each Honoree’s name affixed in bronze on the base. A replica of the statue is presented to each Honoree at the YMCA of the USA National Swimming and Diving Championships. The creator of the statue is Daniel Gluck, whose abstract religious and sports sculptures (including the Brian Picolo Award) are now on view in many public places around the United States. The beautifully sculptured award of bronze and marble stands over four feet in height, weight nearly 1,000 pounds and has a mounted swimming figure that stretches nearly four feet in length.
