MOULTRIE — Before he went to Arizona State, where he won two NCAA championships, and before he won a gold medal in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Bernie Wrightson was the diving coach at a swimming and tennis club in southeast Denver.

One of the youngsters who belonged to the club was Jay Lerew.

“I’d watch him dive and he was always a lot of fun,” Lerew remembers. “He get us on the trampoline and show us things.”

Inspired by Wrightson, Lerew went on to dive at both Oregon and Colorado State, winning NCAA championships and, in 2000, went to an Olympics of his own as the coach of the U.S. team that competed in Sydney, Australia.

From 1989-1996, Lerew was the coach of the Moss Farms Diving program and led the Diving Tigers to its only team championship, at the 1995 Junior Nationals held in Moultrie at the facility named after the man who hired him, Moose Moss.

One of the nation’s most respected diving coaches, Lerew will return to Moultrie next month as one of the 14 members of the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2007.

Also being inducted that night will be Wenbo Chen, the coach that Lerew hired and who succeeded him in 1996, leading the club until 2001.

The banquet will be held on Thursday, Oct. 25, in the Colquitt County High cafeteria.

Tickets are available at the Moultrie-Colquitt County Chamber of Commerce.

Moss lured Lerew away from the Milwaukee YMCA program and the two built what would become one of the nation’s top age-group programs in a rural southwest Georgia community.

Moss died in 1993, but two years later the group of young athletes that he and Lerew had nurtured defeated such large, established programs as the Team Orlando, the Cincinnati Stingrays, Mission Viejo and Rose Bowl Aquatics to win Moss Farms’ first and only championship.

The talent on that team is undeniable. The roster included Lane Bassham, Nikki Unroe, Trey Hart, Camila McLean, Grant Gritzmacher, Chad Sheldon, Chelsie Lerew, Ashley Benner, Clayton Moss, Brittany Lerew, Brooke Bassham, Lauryn McCalley, Jud Campbell, and Camille Akridge.

Wenbo joined Lerew on the coach staff.

Lerew left to take over the Team Orlando program in 1996 and has continued to produce outstanding individual divers and teams.

His success was rewarded in 2000 when he was named as the head coach of the 2000 Olympics team.

But there was a time when Lerew might have had a career in skiing.

After graduating from high school, he earned a scholarship to Oregon, where he was a Pac I champion diver his freshman and sophomore years, qualified for the NCAA championships and was an All-American.

When Oregon dropped its swimming and diving program, he accepted a scholarship offer from Colorado State and became an All-American two more times.

After graduating in 1975, he continued to train at Southern Methodist University on a team sponsored by Nautilus.

Also an avid skier, Lerew had for years been doing what people called freestyle skiing and he soon became, by his own admission, a “ski bum.”

“I’d wash dishes and teach some freestyle ski camps,” he said.

One year, he spent $750 to enter a freestyle ski competition and won $13,000 and a new car.

“I towed the car home behind my pickup truck and quit my job,” Lerew said.

He spent the next four years as a professional freestyle skier.

But several serious injuries suffered by skiers curtailed interest in the sport and purses dried up.

Lerew went back to Colorado State in 1980 to become the school’s diving coach.

While there, he also coached an age-group team and a high school gymnastics team.

And worked on his degree.

Three years later, he took over the YMCA diving program in Milwaukee, Wis.

While there, he also performed clown diving shows for charitable organizations.

And it was while in Milwaukee that he ran into a coach from southwest Georgia named Moose Moss.

“My program was small, but I had a good girls team,” Lerew said. “His boys would beat my boys, but my girls would beat his girls.”

After enduring several years of what he laughingly calls “badgering,” Lerew finally gave in and rode with Moss to Moultrie.

He liked what he saw and joined Moss on the pool deck. It became an outstanding partnership.

“Moose was like my dad,” Lerew said. “He could say anything to me and I could say anything to him. We were open with each other.

“And we both learned so much from each other. It was a perfect match.”

With the two outstanding coaches, Moss Farms was able to begin drawing top divers not just from Colquitt County, but from around the country.

Gritzmacher, Unroe, Brent Roberts and Katie Beth Bryant are examples of divers who moved to Moultrie or spent a great deal of time training here.

It was a blow the program, to age-group diving and to Lerew personally when Moss died in 1993.

“He meant a lot to me,” Lerew said. “It was like losing my father.”

In 1995, after leading the Diving Tigers to the national championship, Lerew was named U.S. Diving’s age group Coach of the Year, the award Moss had won 10 years earlier.

In 1996, Lerew was selected to carry the Olympic torch on part of its journey through Colquitt County on its way to Atlanta for the Summer Games.

In a ceremony later that day, the torch Lerew carried was presented to him as memento by the Moss Farms divers.

Lerew produced a number of Georgia High School Association champions,YMCA national champions and U.S. Diving national champions.

Many of those he trained went on to compete at the college level, including all those who were on the 1995 national championship team.

During his tenure as the Moss Farms diving coach, Lerew also taught physical education at Doerun Elementary.

“I was teaching all day and then spending 3 1/2-4 1/2 hours at the pool,” Lerew said.

So when the offer came to run the Team Orlando program, it was too good to turn down.

“The program (in Moultrie) is run by the parents,” he said. “I wanted my own company.

“They said, ‘Here’s the company. We’re turning it over to you. You’re in charge. And I’m in charge totally.”

So he has been in Orlando since and has continued to train outstanding divers, including Brittany Viola and Mark Ruiz.

After coaching the Olympic team in Sydney, he was the Goodwill Games coach the following year.

In 2002, he was USOC Development Coach of the Year and received U.S. Diving’s Moose Moss Award.

And while coaching the Olympic team might appear to be a career highlight, Lerew says what has enjoyed the most has been traveling with and being around the young divers.

“That is what has really been great,” he said.

And while he has built a power at Team Orlando that also has included his own daughters, who have been outstanding divers, he looks forward to the times he can bring his teams to Moultrie.

“I enjoyed it up there,” he says. “I loved the casualness, the slowness of everything.

“There are a lot of good people up there.”