There are two early stories about Judy Auritt's learning to swim. As her son Billy retells the story, Judy taught herself to swim a little late in life, at about 10 years old while the family vacationed in Southern New Jersey. Her Aunt Rose drove along the Cooper River, coaching her niece and timing her. Judy's daughter Anne tells a second story of how Judy "kept showing up" at her cousins' place across Lake Almonesson in spite of the considerable distance to walk around. Finally, her parents realized that Judy "was swimming all the way across the lake."
By age 11, she was a champion swimmer.
In high school, Judy had a tryout with the coach of the men's swim team at the Broadwood which later became the Philadelphia Athletic Club on Broad and Vine streets. There was no locker room for women at this all-men's club in the 1930s. Judy had to change clothes in the stairwell. This was her first time swimming in a pool. Before she could join the Broadwood Club, she "had to learn to swim straight without bumping into the pool walls," she said, according to an interview prior to her 1985 induction into the PA Sports Hall of Fame.
