Swimming / Tracy Dodds : Trouble in Paradise: Mission Viejo Parents Say Club Is Sinking Fast

When Mark Schubert left the Mission Viejo Nadadores a little more than a year ago to become the coach of a new swim team in Mission Bay, Fla., it seemed only natural that the Nadadores would suffer. A coaching change usually takes its toll.

Of course, some of the top swimmers who had moved to Mission Viejo to train with Schubert figured to move with him to Florida. With a record-setting, nationally known coach leaving after a decade of dominance in club swimming, there also figured to be drops in prestige and national recruiting, no matter who the successor was.

But it’s been worse than that. Much worse.

In fact, it has been a long season of discontent in the affluent, self-contained little community that offers in its advertising: “The California Promise.”

Something has to be amiss when a family that has moved from Atlanta and has bought a home in Mission Viejo primarily so that the daughters can swim for the best club in the country, is now driving the girls to Irvine to compete for the Novaquatics. That’s happening in the Ray Carolin family.

Last June, after a meeting of both the junior and senior national teams, some of the swimmers anonymously sent out a letter complaining about Coach Terry Stoddard and the direction of the team. But anonymous letters from youngsters get little response.

Earlier this month, 30 parents of junior and senior national team swimmers attended a meeting to discuss their concerns about the way their children are being coached and then sent out a news release announcing:

“The demise of the Mission Viejo Nadadores has taken place. The parents allege that the Mission Viejo Company . . . has not responded to their pleas for maintaining the high-level program that was once the shining star of American swimming.”

The Mission Viejo Co., which built the homes in the community and governs such things as what type of landscaping is allowed and what color the homes can be painted, has always sponsored the swim club, providing the pool time, the coaching and the funding it takes to be able to compete with other clubs that also have corporate sponsorships.

Rumors that the company would start phasing out its financial support--now that the homes have been sold and the team has served its public relations purpose--began when it did not bid against Mission Bay to keep Schubert. They continued when the company decided to keep Stoddard, an assistant under Schubert and the interim coach when Schubert left, as its head coach instead of seeking a nationally established coach.

Frank Wattles, the father of a senior swimmer at Mission Viejo, said: “The attitude of the Mission Viejo Co. is that anyone who doesn’t like the way things are going can leave. The fact that the present team is a shadow of its former self doesn’t seem to concern them.

“It’s not the same chemistry in the pool anymore, now that you don’t have the top caliber swimmers beside you during training. . . . If the Mission Viejo Co. were interested in keeping the program up, it would do something corrective.

“A lot of people have invested to move here because of the world- class swimming program. People are coming here on a California promise and finding a California fraud.

“I think it is irresponsible to tell families and their children that you are supporting swimming if you are not. I think it’s irresponsible to see a problem and not correct it. I think it’s irresponsible to see a problem and stonewall it.

“When you try to talk with a representative of the Mission Viejo Co., first of all, you will not get through to Jack Haines, and he’s the guy you should talk to. Second, if you talk to anyone, it will be Jo Shetter, and she’ll tell you about how many hundreds of people are happy with the program and that we’re just a handful of troublemakers. . . . And you probably won’t get Terry Stoddard to talk about us at all.”

Right on all counts.

Stoddard chose not to speak about changes in the club.

Calls to Haines on the subject are transferred to Shetter, administrative manager of corporate affairs, and she does stress the numbers.

She said: “The group you are hearing from is a small group--small but very vocal. We have about 400 swimmers in our program, and we have a very supportive booster group. There is a groundswell of enthusiasm at the age-group level. . . . We have just a tidal wave of emerging talent at the age-group level.”

Parents concerned about the club admit that the age-group program is thriving, but note that age-group swimming is more recreational than competitive and that the younger swimmers are not coached by Stoddard or by Martin Craig, coach of the junior national team.

The parents are mainly concerned about the senior team, which in 1985 won the long-course national title in the Mission Viejo pool, surpassing Santa Clara as the winningest club ever. In 1986, Schubert’s Mission Bay Makos won the long-course title. And in 1987, the meet will be held in the Mission Bay pool that is not yet completed.

The Nadadores’ senior team averaged more than 60 swimmers under Schubert, but it is now down to about 20 and losing its most talented athletes.

Kim Brown and Melissa Skinner have switched to Novaquatics. Even Stephanie Rosenthal, a national age-group champion, has switched to Novaquatics. Dan and Lars Jorgensen went to Novaquatics when their father, Nels, who had been on Schubert’s coaching staff, was passed over in the realignment. They now swim for their father at the Rancho Bernardo Club in San Diego.

Asked about the number of top swimmers who are leaving the program, Shetter said, “If a swimmer is dissatisfied, he or she is free to select another program. There are other excellent clubs to choose from.

“There were swimmers in this area who chose not to swim for Mark Schubert, too, but they chose other coaches without making a lot of noise about it. A good example is John Moffet (a 1984 Olympian) who lived in Costa Mesa. By golly, swimmers are individuals and they have a right to find a coach that they feel comfortable with.

“We have a lot of swimmers here who are just delighted with the program, and with Terry Stoddard.”

As for whether the company is going to decrease its sponsorship funding, Shetter prepared this statement: “The Mission Viejo Co. owns and operates the Mission Viejo recreation centers, which offer a complete range of aquatics programs from learn-to-swim to the senior national swim and diving teams. As long as there is interest from parents and the community, we will continue to support these programs.”

Swimming Notes Betsy Mitchell, a junior at the University of Texas, was named swimmer of the year by United States Swimming. She also won the Phillips performance award for her world record of 2 minutes 8.60 seconds in the 200-meter backstroke at the World Championship trials in Orlando, Fla. . . . The selection meet for the 1988 U.S. Olympic swim team will be held Aug. 8-13, 1987, at the University of Texas pool in Austin. . . . Skip Kenney, the coach at Stanford, will coach the U.S. Pan American team that will compete next August in Indianapolis. . . . The new president of U.S. Swimming is Carol Zaleski of Pittsburgh. . . . Representing the U.S. in a dual meet at Darlington, England, 250 miles north of London, will be three Olympians, John Mykkanen, Rick Carey and Tiffany Cohen; three swimmers from the Goodwill Games, Andrea Hayes, Beth Barr and Janet Evans, and Scott McCadam, Jeff Prior, Brett Beedle, Richard Korhammer, Jeff Utsch, Alex Kostich, Whitney Hedgepeth, Grace Cornelius, Pam Hayden, Julie Martin and Susan Johnson.