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By Brian Pitts
Enterprise Record

The Davie Family YMCA opened its doors in 1991, Davie High had its first swim team in 1991-92 and the legend of Brian Tribble was born when the War Eagles competed against Smith in their first ever meet.
Despite fighting pneumonia, Tribble finished first in the 50 free and 100 free. Coach Karen Umberger said then: “Brian’s only at about 60 percent.”
Tribble was a talented three-sport athlete, but he was a marvel in the water, earning all-state honors three times in two years and getting inducted into the latest hall of fame class with Carrie Brown McGuire (Class of 1994), Tami Ramsey (1996), Raeshon McNeil (2006), Alex Appelt (2008) and the 2015-18 girls tennis teams. The 2025 Davie Athletic Hall of Fame class will be honored at the home basketball game on Jan. 17.
Tribble only has one regret – his mother won’t be there on Jan. 17. Shelia Tribble passed away at age 67 on Feb. 25, 2016. She was one of a kind. A teacher/coach in Davie County Schools for 23 years who retired from South Davie in 2009, she had an unmistakable voice and a huge laugh.
“I know how much she would’ve enjoyed this – because, quite frankly, she was the driving force for everything that I ever did with sports,” said Tribble, who lives in Wilmington with wife Whitney Moyer Tribble. They have two boys – Burke, 19, and Ethan, 16. “My mom is the reason we ended up getting a high school (swim) team. When news of the Davie County Y broke, she started lobbying people, started driving the bus and doing all that kind of stuff.”
In football, Tribble was a two-way varsity starter at defensive back and receiver as a junior and senior. He was good enough at DB to make the Winston-Salem Journal’s All-Northwest Honorable Mention team.
“My football claim to fame was sneaking on the honorable mention list,” he said. “I don’t think I was deserving of that, but it’s fun to be huge football fans like my family is and just have a little something like that.”
But when Tribble appeared on the front page of the Enterprise sports section wearing a speedo, his football teammates let him have it.
“When you’re on the football team after you’ve been on the front page of the sports wearing a speedo … they were unrelenting with the jokes and everything,” he said, laughing. “It was a lot of fun. I wish I had that picture. That was a great picture back in the day.”
Tribble had brilliant speed, setting then-school records in the 400 and 200 while running track as a sophomore and junior. He didn’t run track as a senior because he was preparing for a Division-I swim career.
While Tribble relished his time in football and track, swimming was his gift.
The first Davie swim squads were coached by Umberger, who was assisted by Shelia and Mike Smith. They had 14 girls and 10 boys. The Davie boys enjoyed their first win in the third meet. Tribble captured the 50 free and 100 butterfly as Davie scored 95 points to East Forsyth’s 89 and Smith’s 78. He swam the 200 free relay with Cam Kofke, Matt Osborne and Matt Jones. In the 4-A Western Regional at Davidson College, Tribble qualified for the state by placing fourth in the 50 and fifth in the 100 backstroke.
The next week at UNC, Tribble achieved his first all-state honor by finishing sixth in the 50 free (the top six in each event made all-state).
“I’ll be honest, I did not know,” he said. “I remember placing sixth, but I did not know what qualified as all-state. Somebody came up and said: ‘You realize the top six makes this?’ And I said: ‘Really?’”
There was a new rule in 1992-93: a swimmer could only participate in two events.
“We’re trying to find where he’ll swim,” Umberger said of Tribble. “He can swim everything and anything. It’s just figuring out what expertise to highlight. He’s a good freestyler. He’s good in the butterfly and good in the backstroke.”
Tribble was swimming 1:54 in the 200 and 57 seconds in the butterfly, beating everybody in sight and getting recruited in swimming and football.
“Brian is not a cocky child at all,” Umberger said then. “He’s all business. He’s always willing to help but he doesn’t want to seem like a know-it-all. He just leads by example. Because he is a quality swimmer, the kids see the proper strokes. He works out with the Y team for two hours.”
William & Mary was recruiting Tribble in both sports. “But I’m also looking at Alabama, East Carolina and Tennessee,” Tribble said then.
In the Central Piedmont Conference championship meet at Grimsley, Tribble won the 50 and the butterfly. His 54.82 time in the fly shattered the CPC record by 2.12 seconds. The 400 relay team of Tribble, Kofke, Seth Newman and Josh Nail made all-conference by finishing second.
In the Western Regional, Tribble took third in the butterfly at 53.96 and fourth in the 50 at 22.63.
Tribble wrote another chapter in his Davie legend at the state meet at UNC’s Koury Natatorium. He was second in the 50 at 21.58; JJ Marus of Page was first at 21.47. Although he was tantalizingly close to a state championship, Tribble was ecstatic at being runner-up.
“Thinking back, I remember realizing how lucky and fortunate I was to even be in that position,” he said last week. “I had done my best time ever, I was so happy to have gone as fast as I did. I did not have any expectation that I was going to be at that level at that point in time. It’s a lot of fun to look back on it.”
In the state’s 100 butterfly, Rob Masten of Jordan claimed first at 51.20, Marus was next at 51.64 and Tribble took the bronze medal at 51.96. That made him all-state in two events. Again, he was agonizingly close to being a state champ in two events.
“I was able to finish better than I had ever finished before, so again it was surprising and a real credit to the coaches because so much of that is preparing the swimmers to do what they have to do,” he said. “They put me in that position and I did not realize that I was going to be able to finish that strong.”
Tribble’s brilliant Davie career included the mythical state title in the 100 free. He swam 47.5 in his leg of the 400 relay, and the winning individual time was 48 seconds.
“What I swam in the 50 would have won the state the last four years,” he said then.
When he wasn’t starring for the War Eagles, Tribble was competing for his Winston YMCA team in national events. In Fort Lauderdale, Fl., his 200 free relay team finished second at 1:25.80. Tribble was a YMCA All-American.
In the 1993 YMCA National Championships, Tribble was fifth in the 100 free and seventh in the 50 free. And he could always hear his mom’s megaphone voice.
“I could hear her in the water,” he said. “I remember being in the water in the 50 free, holding my breath, and I could hear my mother from the stands cheering for me. I have such fond memories of that.”
Tribble’s best times at Davie: 51.96 in the 100 butterfly, 21.37 in the 50 free and 47.14 in the 100 free. The 50 and 100 times remain Davie records. His butterfly mark stood for 30 years … until Earnhardt Harris pulled off a 51.62.
“I watched (Harris) break my butterfly record (in 2022-23), and that was awesome,” said Tribble, who witnessed it as he watched his son Burke represent his Ashley High team. “He is good. He is very talented. I was at the state championship meet watching my son when he broke my 100 fly record, so I went down and found him.”
Tribble cemented his legacy by earning a scholarship to Alabama. Smith played a big role in Tribble getting to swim for an iconic coach.
“What I recall is Mike Smith was on a business trip,” he said. “He went out of his way to stop in Tuscaloosa to see the head coach. (Jonty Skinner) was this legendary swimmer from South Africa. He blew away the world record in the 100 free. Mike took film of me, sat down with those coaches and told them my story – because most swimmers swam year-round. It was really the only sport they played. And here I am, I had done it for summers mostly and when I did get a chance to do it year-round, I was doing it for about an hour a day. So they took a chance on me.”
Tribble flew to Alabama for a recruiting visit. “They showed me the football stadium, the Bear Bryant Museum, everything,” he said then. “The campus was awesome.”
He chose Bama over East Carolina and William & Mary. It was the easiest decision of his life. “My mom and dad (Mike) brought me home from the hospital wearing an Alabama football jersey,” he said last week. “My family is huge Alabama fans and I would’ve been thrilled given the chance to play badminton at the University of Alabama, much less be on the swim team. Just being a part of the athletic program was a dream come true.”
For Tribble to earn a scholarship to Bama was truly remarkable considering he played three sports and did not begin swimming year-round until his sophomore year.
“My love was always football,” he said. “Swimming was always just a summer league. I started working at Hickory Hill and that’s how I got to swim in the summers. I did it casually and had a lot of fun with it.”
When Tribble got to Tuscaloosa, he found himself surrounded by supremely talented teammates. He handled it gracefully, swimming for the Crimson Tide for three years before missing his senior year with a right shoulder injury. In 1995, he was a member of Alabama’s SEC championship squad that finished fifth in the conference. A year later, he helped Bama finish sixth at the SEC Championships. He was also an Academic All-SEC selection and a member of the SEC Student-Athlete Honor Roll.
“It was a multi-national team,” he said. “My suitemates were from England, South Africa, New Zealand – guys from all over the world. Not only were they year-round swimmers, many of them had already competed for their country’s Olympic teams.
“To be very blunt, I was certainly underdeveloped from a mechanic standpoint just from the fact that I had not done it as long as a lot of those other guys. So I had to work really hard. Unfortunately, because of that I had some shoulder issues – not right away, but they started to present themselves sooner than I would have liked as a result of probably having not done it as long to build some of the muscles in certain areas to perform at that level.”
What was practice like at a big-time college?
“It was always done in yardage,” he said. “I was in the sprint group and there were days we would do 10,000 yards in a practice. We had two-a-days. There were days you had to be up in the mornings at 4:30 to be in the water by 5:30 and then go to an 8 o’clock class, and then come back in the afternoon and get back in the water again. It was intense, that’s all I can say. It was a lot, but looking back on it I would not change it for anything.”
Tribble became a utility man for the Tide. He swam the 50 free, 100 free, 100 fly and relays. And he cherishes every memory.
“I was good at relays,” he said. “I had the opportunity to make two SEC championship squads. We were in the top 20 (in the country) my first two years, which was really cool. It was absolutely a phenomenal experience just to be a part of that.”