Victoria Dolceamore
By BILL LECONEY
MARGATE – Through all the years and miles of enduring choppy, cold-water ocean currents or swimming against the tide to the brink of physical exhaustion, Victoria Dolceamore remembers the words of Jim Whelan.
“Just keep swimming,” the swim teacher, Atlantic City mayor and state legislator used to say. “Just keep swimming.”
Dolceamore has heeded that advice for the past 40 years.
On Tuesday, she took a jet plane across the pond to realize here lifelong dream of swimming the 21-mile English Channel as part of a relay team for SwimTayka, a charitable organization that promotes swimming and clean water stewardship education for disadvantaged children in waterside communities.
“It is something I’ve always wanted to do,” Dolceamore said of the English Channel swim. “Knowing what I know about the Channel, I just don’t know if I’m ready for a solo swim, so I thought (the relay) would be a nice foundation for me to really understand all that it entails.”
As a test, last December, the 50-year-old Margate resident competed in the 30K Morocco Swim Trek, an 18.6-mile three-legged jaunt in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Africa.
To train for the Channel swim, Dolceamore swam in the pools at Margate’s Jewish Community Center and the Brigantine Aquatic Center, where she also works as a part-time instructor for the Greenheads swimming program.
Victoria Dolceamore completes the 30K Morocco Swim Trek, an 18.6-mile three-legged jaunt in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Africa.
In May, she started swimming in the cold water of the back bay and then to the rough ocean surf off Longport’s 35th Street, where she trained with help of Longport Beach Patrol Chief Matt Kelm. She incorporated weight training for the additional strength and power needed to tackle the turbulent Channel.
Dolceamore, an Atlantic City native, has been swimming ever since she can remember, as a young child at the beach in Longport or Margate or at the pool for the Mainland Recreation Association team, where Whelan served as a coach.
“My father (Anthony Dolceamore) had always said to me, ‘You can do whatever. There’s no limitations on what you want to do in life, where you’re from or who you are.’ As a kid, he used to take me to the Around the Island Swim to watch swimmers like Mike Toy and Cecilia McClosky. He said, ‘Some day you can do that.’”
Dolceamore swam for the Peddie School, Mainland Regional High School and Tulane University. She was the first female member of the Longport Beach Patrol. She was also one of the first local residents to compete in the 22.5-mile Around the (Absecon) Island Swim in 1991, after it was revived as a FIFA-sanctioned international event.
“At that time, I was young and very optimistic, and I wanted to dream big,” said Dolceamore, who also swam around the island as part of a relay team in 1999. “That was an igniter for me, a game-changer.”
Dolceamore is an accomplished long-distance swimmer, but she is so much more than that. She is also a classically trained pianist and writes music for movies, with credits that include Lifetime’s “Invisible Child,” among others. She teaches piano for the Margate Recreation Association and is currently pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership at Drexel University, with a focus on the cognitive impact music makes in the school environment.
She lived (and swam) in California for 20 years and traveled the world as a recruitment and business development officer for PepperdineUniversity
On top of it all, Dolceamore is a mother of three, with 6-year-old twin sons Massimo and Raffaele and 8-year-old daughter Valentina. Her husband, Scott Rosenfelt, is an independent film producer, with credits that include “Home Alone,” “Mystic Pizza” and “Teen Wolf.”
“Music and swimming are my life, other than my children,” Dolceamore said. “Swimming is a life skill. Swimming has helped me have a better understanding of myself, because it’s a time of quiet, it permits you to reflect and think. I’m very competitive, and it makes me more determined to pursue goals and to be more reactive and think about how I behave around my children and influence my children.”
Music and swimming are similar disciplines, says Dolceamore.
“When you grow up doing something like that, and you practice and practice, you can’t just jump in the water and compete, like you can’t just sit down at the piano and be in a piano competition and play Rachmaninoff. It’s incremental growth, there’s no instant gratification. You have to spend time and stick with it, and then you see the fruits of your labor and grow into it.”
Swimming the English Channel is a personal goal for Dolceamore, but to do it for a charity like SwimTayka makes it even more rewarding, she says.
“I didn’t know how I could parlay swimming into a charity, and to have the opportunity to do that, I jumped on the chance, because I thought it would be a great way to share this work with others. If I can influence one person to find something within themselves or to just be part of something, then I’m happy.”
Dolceamore would also love the opportunity to help revive the open-water swimming community in this area, along with like-minded swim enthusiasts such as Sari Puzio of the Brigantine Greenheads and former Around the Island Swim race director Sid Cassidy.
Whelan, who died last year, revived the Swim with a solo circumnavigation many years ago. If Dolceamore’s efforts and example could lead to the return of the Swim, it would make Whelan’s encouragement even more profound.
“Swimming is life,” she says. “The conditions are never perfect. You may not always perform at your best. The current may be strong and lead you astray, and others will nip at your feet, but you have to keep going, continue your journey and do the best that you can, and just keep swimming.”
Editor’s Note: This story was first published in early March on the DownbeachPilot.com.
