LEWISTON – Phil Barr stayed out of the pool for 18 months recovering from a deadly Rhode Island nightclub fire that burned, then scarred his lungs.
He passed out on the floor of The Station minutes after Great White took the stage and the club went up in flames Feb. 21, 2003, in West Warwick. One hundred people died as a result of the fire, and more than 300, including Barr, were injured.
When Barr returned to the Bates College swim team in September 2004, he had missed two seasons. It was his senior year. He still wasn’t 100 percent.
He swam anyway.
On Friday, the NCAA gave Barr the 2005 male Sportsmanship Award for, among other things, determination.
“I did this for me, I came back,” he said Friday night. “I’m just honored having people think this highly of me.”
Barr, 23, has been a competitive swimmer for 14 years. After the fire, he switched to shorter butterfly and freestyle distances. He didn’t have the endurance. He said he had to learn to keep his breathing slow.
Otherwise, “There’s just a real searing pain to it,” Barr said, like trying to take a deep breath of ammonia.
After the fire he was put in a 21-day drug-induced coma to start to heal. The first message he wrote to his father said, “I hope to make progress every day.” Then he tried to live up to that.
Last February, Barr got pneumonia the week of New England Small College Athletic Conference finals.
“(My doctor) propped me up on some antibiotic and said go for it,” he said. “It was an immense pride that I had fought back doing something I had loved to do my entire life.”
He was one of Bates Coach Dana Mulholland’s two swim team recruits in the fall of 2000.
In a release announcing the award, Mulholland called Barr “a teammate, confidant, leader and role model.”
“I have seen courage, compassion, selflessness and determination displayed in many ways over the years, but never more than what Phil Barr displayed at Bates,” he said.
Barr is now an investment banker for JP Morgan in New York City. He and his mother started the Station Family Fund to raise money for victims of the fire.
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