THE TIMES’ ALL-COUNTY SWIMMERS OF THE YEAR : Making Some Big Splashes : Janet Evans Dedicates Her Life to Achieving Excellence in Water

The Department of Motor Vehicles next door is vacant. The sky is just now lightening to a lead gray, and the only sound is the chirping of sparrows. But under the lights at Fullerton’s Independence Park pool, Janet Evans has already logged more than 2,000 meters in the pool.

She has been in the pool since 5:30 a.m., and by 7, when she has completed her morning workout of 5,000 meters, she will quickly dress and be driven to school while she finishes up last night’s homework. After a day at El Dorado High School, Evans, a 15-year-old sophomore, will return to the pool for another 2 1/2 hours and 8,000 meters.

“Even during finals, Janet doesn’t miss a workout,” said Bud McAllister, her coach on the Fullerton Aquatic Swimming Team (FAST). “If anything, I have to tell her to take a workout off so she doesn’t get too tired.”

The extra hard work has always helped Evans. At the Southern Section swimming championships in May, she won the 200-yard individual medley in 2 minutes 2.80 seconds, almost three seconds ahead of the runner-up. She won the 500-yard freestyle in 4:42.22, almost four seconds ahead of the runner-up and 16 1/2 seconds ahead of the third-place finisher. She missed Cynthia Woodhead’s national high school record by two-tenths of a second.

Evans, The Times’ Orange County female swimmer of the year, has devoted her life to the sport in which she has been competing since she was 4.

“They all thought I would burn out,” Evans said. “I went to my first junior nationals at 11. I guess they thought I was so young and already training so hard . . . but I haven’t burned out yet.”

At last summer’s Goodwill Games in Moscow, Evans placed third in the 800-meter freestyle (8:38.07) and third in the 1,500-meter freestyle (16:24.92). This came after two Soviet swimmers had laughed at her size, or rather, lack of it. At the time, Evans stood 5-feet and weighed just 80 pounds.

“It was kind of degrading to have them laugh at me just because of my size,” Evans said. “I got third, but the two girls who beat me were Americans.”

A year later, Evans has grown three inches and put on 12 pounds. She has also sliced 30 seconds off her 1,000-yard freestyle time, to 9:32.

In January, she traveled with the U.S. national team and competed in Paris, East Berlin, and Bonn, West Germany.

In March, at the U.S. Short Course competition in Boca Raton, Fla., Evans won three of the four events she entered. She won the 1,650-yard freestyle (15:56.53) by seven seconds. Her margin of victory was four seconds in the 1,000-yard freestyle (9:32.59). She also won the 400-yard individual medley (4:12.32) and finished fourth in the 500-yard freestyle (4:43.87).

As Evans has learned, when you live to swim, you miss a lot. She says other swimmers kid her about her lack of a social life.

“I do get a lot of static, especially from other swimmers,” she said. “They say I swim and I go to the movies. But they’re the ones who never come to workouts and are disappointed by how they do at meets.

“Anyway, I would rather go to Paris than a school dance.”

Monday: Tennis