Ron C. Judd / Times staff columnist
Pooling resources to help diluted UW

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LONG BEACH, Calif. — Alongside the warm-down pool at the Olympic swim trials, Mickey Wender is in a rare state of panic.

"I had a number of a recruit somewhere here," the University of Washington swim coach said, searching through his pockets, "and I can't find it."

A few seconds later, it turned up.

Crisis averted.

Those are two familiar words to Wender, the irrepressible coach of a swim program his own university administration tried to snuff four years ago this month.

The Olympic trials are one-stop shopping for coaches recruiting top young swimmers. At the last one, four years ago in Indianapolis, Wender got the rug pulled from beneath him.

At the time, UW athletic director Barbara Hedges (for more on her see "Rick Neuheisel," "Teresa Wilson," "NCAA violations," and "expensive incompetence") had announced that Huskies swimming, which lacked facilities and momentum, would never be nationally competitive, thereby was going the way of the Edsel and free admission to Bumbershoot.

Huskies swimmers walked the aisles of bleacher seats in Indianapolis in 2000 with petitions headlined "Save Husky Swimming!"

It was sad and tragic, and at the time, we and many others questioned the nonsensical move, suggesting that Hedges may, in fact, have had a bad experience as a youngster with an inflatable pool toy. The Seattle-area swim community, teaming with alums of a once-proud program, rose from the depths and yelped even more loudly, prompting Hedges to reverse course and spare it.

That might have been the last smart thing Hedges ever did at Montlake, and it gave the program a long-overdue injection of public support. But it also cast a pall over recruiting.
 
A handful of current and former Huskies swimmers — freestyler Kim Harada, breaststroker Derek Rose and butterflyer Justin Adrian — performed well at these trials, but the meet was far from packed with Huskies swimmers.

"It was tough those first couple of years after they cut the program.," he said.

It's getting a lot easier. Consider what's happened:

• Huskies swimming has succeeded beyond all reasonable expectations: Washington is the only college in the country without an Olympic-sized pool and diving team to place in the top 25 for men and women at the NCAAs the past two years.

• UW offices, all the way from Tubby Graves to the president's suite, have new occupants.

• The swimming team signed "the best recruiting class in my time at Washington," Wender said.

The swim class of '08 is loaded with local and national swimmers with impressive high-school careers — and a foreign recruit, Bruno Barbic of Zagreb, Croatia, who comes with some eye-popping swim times.

"Typically, we've brought people in and developed them and brought them to that (top) level," Wender said. "Now, we're starting to bring them in at that level."

Wender still has trouble luring the crème de la crème, however, because of the program's nemesis — facilities. The Huskies' 25-yard training pool, built in the 1930s, is a relic compared to other Pac-10 facilities.

A fundraising drive for a new aquatics center, spearheaded by former UW All-American swimmer Bill Patterson, is ongoing. It'll cost about $12 million, Wender believes, to build a 50-meter training pool and diving facility on campus — perhaps as part of an oft-discussed revamp of the south side of Husky Stadium.

"We've got more commitments than dollars at this point," he said. "The money is there. It's just a matter of demonstrating the commitment on the part of the administration."

These Olympic trials have demonstrated, once again, the depth of swim talent in the Puget Sound area, Wender notes. Two newly crowned Olympians, Stanford's Tara and Dana Kirk, of Bremerton, and Puyallup's Megan Quann are just the best known of about two dozen swimmers who competed here.

How many of them, you wonder, could have been lured into swim caps bearing a purple "W" if the program was solidified by a new training facility?

"It drives me out of my mind," Wender said of watching all that local talent — much of which has gone out-of-state to swim collegiately.

To some degree, it's inevitable that kids want to move away from home. And it's tough to compete with a school like Stanford, he says — although he tried, mightily, to bring the Kirk sisters to Montlake.

"But, I do think we're developing the attitude that people want to grow up and swim for the Huskies, the same way people growing up want to play football for the Huskies," he said.

Wender is banking on this. On recruiting trips, he turns the focus off the pool and onto the big picture — the university, the lifestyle — and to an even greater extent, his team's "underdog" spirit.

"It's more than just a pool," he said. "I like that we have a bit of a chip on our shoulder in that we have something to prove. We're not the proverbial rich kid with the silver spoon. We've got to work and earn it. That's how my career has always been — building from the bottom up."

Wender, former coach of the UC-Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, chuckles when he's reminded that he came to the right place for that.

He isn't waiting for the arrival of cement trucks to move Huskies swimming forward. He is making do with what is here, even investigating the chance that the UW could field a diving team in the near future, in the campus rec pool, with about a half-million dollars from a local donor for salaries, pool time and travel.

The swim program already benefits mightily from donations from Starbucks, which has financed UW swimmers summer meets, training and travel for the past three years. And other donors have stepped up — one, an anonymous CEO of a Seattle company, has donated $100,000 to the program, Wender said.

This is what drives Mickey Wender. At the last trials, he was stunned and scrambling. At this one, he's proud and optimistic, leading a program that has taken next to nothing and turned it into something quite promising. At the next one?

Huskies swimming is on an upward curve — a couple of lucky breaks, and perhaps a couple more generous donations — toward being big-time.

Even an underdog needs the occasional long swim — 50 meters, to be precise.

Ron C. Judd: 206-464-8280 or at rjudd@seattletimes.com.