Swimming / Tracy Dodds : Head Coach of U.S. National Team Will Now Be a Full-Time Position

The 44 United States swimmers who competed in the Olympics at Seoul were accompanied and advised by a contingent of 17 coaches, including Richard Quick, the designated head coach. Quick, as coach of the outstanding University of Texas women’s team, had several of his Longhorn swimmers on the U.S. team. He was responsible for coaching them all the way through, as well as making the decisions about which swimmers would swim which legs of relays.

But the other Olympic swimmers were ultimately coached by their personal coaches.

One of the possible changes in the American system that Quick suggested was the establishment of a full-time position for a coach to coordinate the U.S. swimming coaching staff instead of passing the job around every 4 years among the top coaches.

What the U.S. effort needed, Quick contended, was some continuity, a person who could devote all of his time to seeing that U.S. Swimming helped all of the programs develop to their potential, a person who would coordinate the efforts of all of those individual coaches.

At the meeting of the U.S. Swimming House of Delegates in St. Louis last week, the establishment of that position was approved. U.S. Swimming will add to its staff a full-time national team director.

It is likely to be someone such as the recently retired George Haines, who has been the U.S. Olympic coach in the past, or Don Gambril of Alabama, who was the U.S. coach for the 1984 Olympic Games.

Also at the meetings in St. Louis, U.S. Swimming suspended Troy Dalbey for 18 months for stealing a decorative mask from a bar in Seoul while celebrating winning the gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle relay earlier in the evening. Dalbey will, therefore, miss 2 U.S. Open meets, all the national meets and the Pan Pacific meet in Tokyo.

Doug Gjertsen, who was with Dalbey when the police became involved hours later but who was not with him when the mask was taken from the wall, was suspended from U.S. swimming events for 3 months.

Whether Gjertsen will be allowed to compete for the University of Texas in National Collegiate Athletic Assn. meets will be up to the school and the NCAA.

As expected, most of the U.S. water polo players have resigned since the Olympic Games. It was a veteran team made up of players who won the silver medal in 1984 and came back to try for the gold in 1988. That they had to settle for silver again had nothing to do with the resignations. It was just time.

Announcing their retirements through the U.S. Water Polo office in Colorado Springs were captain Terry Schroeder of Santa Barbara, James Bergeson of Newport Beach, Greg Boyer of Laguna Beach, Jody Campbell of Long Beach, Peter Campbell of Irvine, Mike Evans of Costa Mesa, Alan Mouchawar of Long Beach and Kevin Robertson of Costa Mesa.

Staying on are defensive specialist Doug Kimbell of Long Beach, 2-meter man Jeff Campbell of Irvine, goalie Chris Duplanty of Honolulu and drive Craig Klass of Danville, Calif.

Whether U.S. Coach Bill Barnett and his staff stay on or not will be determined by a vote of U.S. Water Polo Inc. in December.

The U.S. National Indoor meet is being held this weekend at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. The top 12 teams in the nation are competing.

The next international competition for the U.S. team will be the FINA World Cup on June 10-16 in West Berlin.

The only competition site being built for the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle is the Aquatics Center, an $18.8-million facility 20 miles south of the city, toward Tacoma. The ground-breaking ceremony for the center was Thursday.

There was some discussion of building the facility in Tacoma, but the King County Council came up with $8 million to add to the $5.8 million the Seattle Organizing Committee had raised, so the pool will be in King County.

The Sabey Corp. is building the center at cost. And the Quadrant Corp. donated the land. Even with those donations, the fund came up a little short, so there is a project seeking to raise another $1.2 million before January.

Bob Walsh, president of the Seattle Organizing Committee, said: “It is the blending of public and private resources in this type of cooperation that made the 1962 World’s Fair a success, and it will do the same for the 1990 Goodwill Games.”

Having the indoor facility with a 50-meter competition pool, diving tank and warmup pool, with seating for 2,500 spectators, also will give Seattle the opportunity to bid for national championship meets and other international meets.

Swimming Notes

Construction is 2 weeks ahead of schedule in the Arroyo Seco, where demolition of the old Brookside Plunge is making way for the new Rosebowl Aquatics Center. Bill Krueger, fund-raising consultant of the Rosebowl Aquatics Center, said that construction of the new facility will begin by the end of November and should be completed by July, 1989.

The U.S. team will renew its dual meet series with the Soviet Union, starting with a meet in Atlanta next Aug. 25-27. . . . Ian Jaquiss, who has competed for USC, won a gold medal in the 50-meter breaststroke in Seoul in the Paralympics, which were held Oct. 15-24.