She Refuses to Sit Still for a Time : Breaststroker Tina Schnare Bolted From Nowhere to 4 Records in a Week

Tina Schnare had made considerable progress since arriving at Cal State Northridge in September, but no one really expected the freshman swimmer to leave Florida two weeks ago with four national records.

As she packed for the NCAA Division II championships in Orlando, Schnare’s times were nothing to get overly excited about. Her best marks in the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke were substantially slower than the records set by two-time defending national champion Tara McKenna of Boston College in 1985.

But at this year’s meet, Schnare surprised McKenna and herself when she won the 100 and 200, setting records along the way.

In fact, Schnare’s times of 1:04.76 and 2:21.81 would have placed her seventh and 16th at the NCAA Division I finals last week at Arkansas. Her previous personal records before the Division II championships were 1:06.4 and 2:24.1.

She also helped two CSUN relay teams set Division II championship records.

“Now she’s in the Top 10 nationally as a freshman,” said CSUN swim Coach Pete Accardy, “which is a pretty big move from nowhere.”

Actually, the 18-year-old green-eyed blonde comes from Manhattan Beach. In four years at Mira Costa High, Schnare won enough races in the Bay League, but wasn’t particularly impressive against tougher competition.

Even worse, she grew tired of swimming.

“I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t care. I didn’t even know if I wanted to keep swimming,” she said.

Sandy Schnare said that her daughter developed other interests.

“She reached a point where she realized she wasn’t going to be a Tracy Caulkins in high school. She decided there was more to life than putting her head in the water.” Caulkins won three gold medals in the 1984 Olympic Games.

Tina was no different than most teen-agers. There was a boyfriend, music, television and shopping to consider. She even thought about getting a job.

“I just wanted to be a kid in high school,” she said, “and not feel like I had to be swimming all the time.”

Ironically, Schnare took up, of all things, time-consuming hobbies like cross-country running and long-distance bicycling.

Although she says she enjoyed all the activity, her mother gave another reason: “Tina wasn’t blessed with a slim figure. That’s why she runs. She wouldn’t like me telling that. She doesn’t like talking about it.”

When asked, Tina said she liked to run. Which was to say, she didn’t want to turn into a blob.

While Schnare never really stopped swimming for an extended period, she had doubts about continuing to swim in college. The feeling was mutual. No colleges recruited her.

At first, she decided to attend Cal State Long Beach, but she changed her mind when it became unclear who would be the 49er coach.

Sandy Schnare then called swimming coaches at several other schools. Accardy was interested.

“I was concerned because she didn’t train that hard in high school,” said Accardy. “And she lacked confidence.” But he gave her a tuition scholarship anyway.

After watching Tina swim the first time, the coach told her that he thought she could swim the 100 breastroke in 1:05 and the 200 in 2:20. “When I told her that,” Accardy said, “she looked at me like I was crazy.”

Said Schnare: “I was scared. I had been told that CSUN trained hard and took everything real seriously.

“It was kind of iffy the first week. I didn’t know if I wanted to put my body through the pain.

“Getting up at 6 in the morning was a pain in the butt. There were times when I wanted to turn the alarm off and roll over.”

Sandy Schnare said it wasn’t so much that Tina wasn’t committed to swimming, but that she lacked confidence and self-esteem.

“If she’s challenged, she’s not the type to say, ‘I’ll show you.’ Instead, she’d say, ‘Oh, really?’ ”

Even after her record-setting performances at the nationals, Accardy said Schnare still is overcoming her problem with confidence.

“This is a big step in building her up,” he said. “She’s one of the best breaststrokers in the country, but I’m not sure she realizes that. She’s not that mature right now. She’s like a little girl in that things you would think are obvious to her--like her abilities--aren’t obvious to her.

“She’s at the point now, if she makes a little more progress, you’re talking about one of the top 10 swimmers in her event in the world.”

Schnare credits Accardy for helping her lower her time in the 200 breaststroke more than seven seconds in the last year. In the 100, she’s taken nearly three seconds off her personal best.

“Pete made the difference,” she said. “He motivated me to work hard and believe in myself.

In the same breath, though, Schnare said, “I’ll always need support. I can’t do it myself. I need someone to lean on--like a coach--to encourage me to do my best.”

Clearly, Schnare is a shy teen-ager who is more than a little surprised by her first-time success on the national level. Although she wants to gain confidence, she says she never wants to be a “swell head.”

“Tina doesn’t seem competitive outwardly,” said CSUN roommate Stacy Mettam, who also won four events in Florida, “but she really wants to win. She gets nervous. But the results at nationals has helped her. She wants to go back next year and break her own records.”

In the meantime, Schnare is still adjusting to college life and admits that she’s hardly a model student. “I don’t enjoy studying. I’m not into studying the way I’m into swimming.”

She is a study in contradictions.

She said she’s tired of swimming, that she’s looking forward to taking a break over the summer--so instead she plans to run six to eight miles a day, as well as work out on her bike.

She called swimming a “pain in the butt,” but in her next sentence said that she already can’t wait for next season.

She said that, despite her success, she wouldn’t think of leaving CSUN for a Division I school--that Pete and the team have done too much to help her. But then she said: “I would die if USC offered me a scholarship. I would go. I would die.

“It would be a lot of fun to go to UCLA, USC or UC Santa Barbara. I’d want to stay in California.”

You figure it out.

“Swimming takes away everything,” the teen-ager said. “I can’t even go home over the weekends because we swim over the weekends. I resented it when it kept me from going home. I mean I only live 45 minutes from here.

“I had a boyfriend that I dated for 3 1/2 years. But swimming sort of destroyed that because we never saw each other.

“After winning, though, I wouldn’t change anything,” she said. “When I was up on the awards stand at the nationals--that’s when I realized it had been worth it. It was the most fantastic feeling I’ve ever had in my life.”

But she’s not interested in the Olympics?

“No. Well, maybe if I was one of the top swimmers. I would like to swim in the Olympic trials, though. That would be fun.”