Alabama A&M’s Lady Sea Dogs swimming program constructed legacy of excellence in Nineteen Eighties

NORMAL, Ala. (WAFF) – Alabama A&M University’s Sea Dogs and Lady Sea Dogs swimming packages created a legacy of athletic excellence through the late Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, turning into one of many premier Black swimming packages within the nation.

The program started as an intramural males’s sport earlier than evolving right into a full NCAA Division II program within the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference with the addition of a girls’s staff.

Sandra Lyles-Jackson turned the primary scholarship athlete for the Lady Sea Dogs as an NCAA program.

“The young men had said, hey, Doc has a baby sister,” Lyles-Jackson stated, referring to Coach Freddie Wycoff. “And they were really nice to me. They were seniors. And then, they graduated. And then Doc decided to recruit an all-female team.”

The program recruited elite swimmers from Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta to compete in Normal, Alabama.

“People recognized it,” stated former Lady Sea Dogs swimmer Dana Jones. “You know, you’re on a swim team. We were like the unicorn, I guess you could say, black swimmers. And that everybody on the team was good, you know, to the degree that we knew, looking at each other, that we were all really great swimmers, have been swimming competitively for years, like since childhood.”

Former swimmer Kim Woodberry described the staff dynamic as a sisterhood.

“We had so much fun. From getting up early morning, suffering together. We had to walk across that bridge from Terry Hall in the freezing cold in the morning. Together, we made up songs, suffered together in the evening, going up. But we had fun from the morning until the late evening,” Woodberry stated. “In the dorm, out of the dorm, on road trip. It was a great sisterhood.”

Freddie Wyckoff Jr., identified merely as “Doc,” coached the Lady Sea Dogs to 6 Black nationwide swimming and diving championships between 1982 and 1987.

“I just felt like, from the beginning, Doc made it really comfortable for us,” stated former swimmer Sharonne Jones-Jamar. “So, I’ve always been a member of a swim team. So, coming in and joining a new team was nothing new for me. But it was just fun. Just meeting new people, new swimmers. And like I said, just being an all-black female team at the time. And just being able to swim in a D-1 setting for us was very good and very exciting.”

Wyckoff died in 2024, leaving an enduring legacy at Alabama A&M.

“We were his daughters. So, I miss Doc Wyckoff,” Lyles-Jackson stated. “I really missed him. He was a phenomenal coach, a mentor and a friend.”

Click Here to Subscribe on YouTube: Watch the newest WAFF 48 information, sports activities & climate movies on our YouTube channel!

Copyright 2026 WAFF. All rights reserved.