A Winning Newsletter

The 2008 TYR Newsletter of the Year was awarded to "Maverick Lane Lines" edited by Florida Maverick Masters Margie and Paul Hutinger. Selected from over 300 USMS club and LMSC newsletters, it has ranked in the top five or ten, six times in the past ten years.

Margie and Paul Hutinger received the U.S. Masters Fitness Award in 2003. As directors of the Florida Maverick Masters, Paul and Margie spent a great deal of time that year promoting the Virtual Swim Series among their teammates and thus were co-recipients of the 2003 Fitness Award. In response to their efforts, the entire team is participating in at least one of the Virtual Swims. In addition, Paul and Margie are in the process of developing a new Virtual Swim, Swim around the Florida Keys, to be added to the growing list of possible swims. During the year, in addition to the V.S.S., Paul and Margie continually promote other fitness activities in which the entire team participates.

About Paul's bride, Margie Hutinger

from the Maverick Master's newsletter, January, 2000

Margie Hutinger, 60, started swimming in the family pond, in Ohio. She had formal swimming lessons at Miami (Ohio), and taught at summer camp. She was an age group swimming mom for her three children, in Port Washington, Wis. When they no longer competed, she coached novice swimmers in Wisconsin and Illinois.

In 1987, at age 47, with no competitive swimming background and tired of sitting through swim meets in the bleachers, she joined Wisconsin Masters. On the way to her first meet she almost chickened out driving to the pool. She hung in there, dove off the blocks, and was beaten in her very first event, 100 IM, by a woman 20 years her senior. Her oldest son told her not to worry, she just had more experience. Since then, she has competed in every event and frequently makes Top Ten.

Margie and Paul met at the Pan Pacific Meet in Indy, in 1989. Four years later, they were married on the deck of the North Shore Pool in their swim suits after a Sunday morning workout. She swam for St. Pete Masters for several years, and in November, 1996, was one of the swimmers who joined together to create a new team, the Florida Mavericks Masters.

She continues to provide leadership for the Mavericks. She writes the newsletter, which has ranked in the Top five among USMS team newsletters for two years. She is the Florida LMSC Top 10 and Records Recorder and was a delegate to the National Convention in 1999. In her spare time, she cycles and competes in triathlons. She and her husband Paul, live in St. Petersburg, Fla.

See also: Laps count, but so do smiles By Terry Jones, St Petersburg Times, published December 23, 2003

Tribute to Margie Hutinger
By Meegan Wilson
Nov. 12, 2018

This is very sad news. On Oct. 7, 2018, Margie Hutinger died at age 78 of a myocardial infarction while on a cruise with one of her best friends in Rhodes, Greece. She was taking a walk on the island when it happened.

“Margie always had a wonderful sense of humor," says Chuck Hutinger, her stepson. "When I received a copy of the death certificate, it was in Greek. I can see Margie looking at me with a twinkle in her eye and say, ‘See Chuck, it’s still all Greek to you!’”

Margie was a fixture in the Florida LMSC for eight years, serving as the Florida LMSC records and Top 10 chair from 1999 through 2006. In 2007, she received the Florida LMSC Service Award for her service and dedication.

Margie attended the USMS annual meeting for the first time as a delegate in 1999. She served on several USMS committees since then: the Records and Tabulation Committee from 2000-2007, the Fitness Committee from 2003-2007, the Recognition and Awards Committee from 2012-2014, and the History and Archives Committee from 2015-2017.

In 2003, she received the USMS Dorothy Donnelly Service Award. Margie and Paul Hutinger, her husband who died in 2014, also received the USMS Fitness Award in 2003 for promoting a “virtual swim series” as a motivational tool to encourage swimmers to get fit.

Margie was born in 1940 and graduated from Dalton High School in Dalton, Ohio, and received a scholarship to attend Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she met her first husband, Allan Gene Simsic. They were married in 1966 and had three children, Ann, Matthew, and Michael. She was a swim mom, taking her children to swim meets, before deciding she wanted to swim and compete herself. She joined Wisconsin Masters in 1987 at the age of 47 and in 1988 she received her first national Top 10 finish, 10th place in the 100 breaststroke in the 45-49 age group. She became a member of Lincoln Masters in 1991 and then transferred to St. Pete Masters on Jan. 1, 1992.

Margie met Paul Hutinger at a swim meet in 1989 in Wisconsin. On May 16, 1993, they were married on the North Shore pool deck in St. Petersburg, Fla., with Judge Robert Beach presiding. It was a second marriage for both of them. They were devoted to each other for over 20 years. Paul Hutinger was still competing at the age of 89 when he died of skin cancer.

Margie was one of the charter members of the Florida Maverick Masters (FMM), founded on Dec. 26, 1996. She and Paul were the leaders and true motivators of FMM. They were the glue that binds a club together. In 2000 she was awarded “Maverick of the Month.” She served as secretary, treasurer, registrar, and co-newsletter editor with Paul. The Maverick Lane Lines received the USMS/TYR Newsletter of the Year Award in 2008.

In 1999 she ran the USMS 3000/6000-Yard ePostal National Championship. Her motto on the final results read, “The meek may inherit the earth... but they’ll never rule the water.” Margie ran two more USMS ePostal national championship events, the USMS 1-Hour ePostal National Championship in 2002 and 2007. In 2011 Margie received the Florida LMSC Club Service Award for all the work she did for the Florida Maverick Masters.

Since her Top 10 finish in 1988, Margie has received 10 more Top 10 individual finishes and 81 Top 10 relay finishes. Relays she was on received All-American recognition six times.

In 2010 she completed another item on her bucket list—a triathlon when she turned 70. She did the Meek and Mighty Triathlon in a time of 59 minutes, 39 seconds and finished in second place in her age group.

A maverick is defined as “Being independent in thought and action or exhibiting such independence." Margie was a maverick, she was life itself. She will be missed.