CODRUŢA SALA (PARASCHIV, SCHRÕDER) - SWIMMER & COACH 

This page is dedicated to Sala Codruta, whose athletic and coaching achievements are hard to overstate. 

Sala Codruta’s life-long association with ILSA started in the mid 1950’s, when she decided to tag along Flori, her older brother, who had just been recruited by Tzulu Morariu to join Lovas Peter’s swim team.

Codruta’s first competition away from home took place in Resita in December 1956, in the indoor pool’s inaugural meet. Her first mention in the national sports media occurred a year later, when Timisoara’s swim team took first place in the Pionieriada competition in Bucharest. At the award ceremony, Codruta was given the honor of receiving the first-place cup, an event that was filmed and featured in the weekly “Jurnal de Actualitati”, shown in movie theaters nation-wide. The winning team included Gradl Ferdinand (Bibilo), Hasi Stoff and Peter Stoff, among others.

Continuing to train under coach Lovas Peter, Codruta soon achieved national prominence in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s with the setting of two national records, in the 50 meter and 100 meter butterfly events. The latter stayed on the books for a few years. 

During the same period, Codruta added two national championship titles to her many regional first-place finishes: swimming in Bucharest against Romania’s elite, she won the 100 meter butterfly and 100 meter freestyle races in the National Youth Championships (Campionatele Nationale de Juniori). Selected to be part of Romania's national team, Codruta participated in several international swim meets.

During her swimming years, ILSA in essence was Codruta's home-away-from-home. After workouts, she would spend countless hours playing water-tag, sun-bathing or just mingling. An avid reader and an engaging conversation partner, Codruta was a central figure in ILSA’s social life, well-known and much-liked by virtually everyone.

A graduate of  the Nicholas Lenau German language high school, Codruta was admitted to the sports section of Timisoara’s Institutul Pedagogic, from where she emerged in 1967 with full teaching credentials. In the same year, she secured a coaching position at SSE Timisoara, working alongside Lovas Peter.

Further pursuing her higher education, Codruta studied three more years at Bucharest's Institutul de Cultura Fizica, casually known as "ICF-ul mare", Romania's most prestigious sports university. With her new college degree, she joined the sports section of Timisoara's Politechnical Institute, where she steadily advanced from her entry position of Asistent Universitar to Conferentiar Universitar.

Lovas Peter’s defection in 1970 left Codruta alone in charge of Timisoara’s swim team. Initially assisted by two enthusiastic friends, Ioana Baciu-Heder and Szuhanek Gyuri, the coaching staff was strengthened by the arrival of Doina Pentia, a former nationally-ranked swimmer and ICF graduate herself. This marked the start of a long partnership between Codruta and Doina, who together went on to produce some of Timisoara's finest swimmers ever. 

Codruta’s coaching philosophy can best be described as “swimming is the main thing, but not the only thing”, an approach that - not surprisingly - was quite similar to that of her own coach, Lovas Peter. Just like Peter-Bacsi, Codruta placed a lot of emphasis on discipline, but also took an interest in the academic activities of her athletes, encouraged them to read, and made sure that their training schedules and school-related work did not clash.

Over the years, Codruta has produced a slew of national champions in various age groups, but undoubtedly, her crowning achievement as a coach are her four swimmers who have been awarded the honorary title of Maestru al Sportului, namely Rolik Carol, Parutsch Karin, Alexe Carmen and Seidl Christina. 

Codruta's coaching career ended abruptly in 1990, the result of the passing of her husband, Dominic, during the confusing days of Romania's anti-communist uprising. A few years later, Codruta was once again hit by personal tragedy, when she lost her oldest son.

The utterly difficult years of the early 1990's ended when Codruta met and married Gert Schröder, a German psychologist living in Denmark. Relocated to her new country in 1997, Codruta continued to pursue her educational goals, and in 1998 she returned to Romania to earn her Master's degree in pedagogy. In June 2005, Codruta added yet another Master's degree to her credentials, this time from the Danish University of Education in Copenhagen.

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