SINK OR SWIM : Pursley Is Thrust Into Role of Overseeing Revival of U.S. Aquatics

On the bleakest night of an overall less-than-stellar Olympic swimming effort in Seoul last fall, Richard Quick, the U.S. coach at the time, sat at the side of the warm-up pool and enumerated, one more time for the record, what he thought was needed to get the United States back into a position of dominance in international waters. Among his suggestions was a recommendation for a full-time, long-term national coach.

In March, Dennis Pursley became U.S. Swimming’s national team director.

He’s not exactly a coach. That is, he doesn’t stand on the deck with a stopwatch and he doesn’t instruct any swimmer on how to swim. But he’s not exactly a stick-to-the-office bureaucrat, either.

Pursley comes from the coaching ranks and he believes that a big part of his job is to keep in constant contact with the coaches, to know what the needs are, and to help the coaches get the swimmers ready to win in the next Olympic Games.

“Absolutely, I see my job as doing everything I can to get the best team possible to Barcelona,” Pursley said. “I’m looking at each meet, each event, as a step toward Barcelona.”

And having a national director means that there is an office in Colorado Springs that serves as a clearing house of information and ideas, that keeps all those steps in sync. “There is continuity, and a long-range view,” Pursley said. “We don’t have a new group coming in every year or every few years to re-invent the wheel.”

Of course there will still be a range of opinions. Not all of the coaches and swimmers and parents are going to agree on what steps are the best steps. For that matter, there were plenty of coaches who didn’t think there was a need for a national director.

“The key to success is the cooperation of the coaches,” Pursley said. “I was very apprehensive about accepting the position because I wasn’t sure what the level of cooperation would be. But in the first few months, I couldn’t be more pleased. Even the coaches who are doubtful that this is the way we should go are being cooperative.

“That cooperative attitude is what is going to help U.S. Swimming regain the dominance we once enjoyed.”

At the Olympic International Operations Committee meeting in April in Colorado Springs, Pursley was given approval for his first four-year plan.

Not all of his objectives can be simply acted upon. Some are long-range goals. But at least there is a direction.

Among Pursley’s goals:

--Changing the scheduling of the Olympic trials. In 1992, the trials will be held a full five months before the Games, giving the swimmers time to recover from the very competitive qualifying meet and prepare for the Olympics as their individual coaches choose.

--Planning some training camps in Barcelona.

--Rethinking the national meet schedule to put the focus on what is best for the United States as a national team. A swimmer’s competitions should build toward a best performance in international competition and Olympic competition. Meets should not divert attention and energies.

--Establishing a system of rankings that would allow swimmers to make the national team and be automatically qualified for more than one international competition. That is, to eliminate the pressure on swimmers to peak for qualifying meets and give U.S. Swimming the opportunity to include in international competition swimmers who are likely to win medals.

--Eliminating some of the scheduling conflicts between U.S. Swimming and the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.

--Convincing the NCAA that a short-course program (yards) is at odds with the development of swimmers who must compete internationally long course (meters).

--Developing better financial support for postgraduate swimmers in order to keep elite athletes swimming for the U.S.

--Promoting the concept of the U.S. team, not just in the few weeks around the international competitions, but at all times.

No new notions at all. But until now, no one has been employed full time to bringing the coaches together to get these goals accomplished.

“My job has been likened to a general manager position,” Pursley said. “I can free up the coaches to coach, unencumbered by administrative responsibilities. At the same time, I can bring some continuity to our teams. It’s not an entirely new staff every few years.”

The national coaches now are elected to serve for about a year. Currently the U.S. team coaches are Don Gambril of the University of Alabama for the men and Dick Shoulberg of Team Foxcatcher for the women.

U.S. Swimming has been evolving toward this arrangement for several years.

Gambril was the first Olympic coach who was asked to serve a longer term, and he served as national coach in 1983 and 1984.

Then, in 1985, U.S. Swimming decided that a national head coach should serve four years, to develop the Olympic team. Quick was named to that position from 1985 through the Olympics in the fall of 1989. But Quick, then the women’s coach at the University of Texas, didn’t have the position long before he was saying that the national coach should devote more time to the effort that anyone could devote while at the same time devoting full time to his own swimmers.

The person in charge of directing the effort needed to have a background as a coach in order to understand the needs of the swimmers and the positions of the coaches.

Pursley has coached seven different teams, including the Lakeside (Ky.) Swim Club, the Cincinnati Pepsi Marlins, the Olympian Swim Club in Edmonton and the new Phoenician Swim team in Phoenix. Among the swimmers he has coached is Mary T. Meagher.

Pursley also served as the national team director in Australia.

Pursley makes it clear that among his first orders of business is figuring out just what his job is and what he can reasonably expect to accomplish.

“Prior to the time the position was created, all policy and structure was determined by a very large committee, 40 or 50 people on the Olympic International Operations Committee,” Pursley said. “It was mostly prominent coaches and about 20% athletes. The committee met twice yearly for up to 15 hours in a day. . .

“There was a growing frustration because this committee wasn’t able to accomplish what it wanted to accomplish. They felt we needed someone doing it day in and day out to establish continuity . . . That committee is still important. I am here to try to carry out the goals of the committee.”

And to serve as a liaison between the coaches and the committee. Which, basically, makes him a liaison between coaches and coaches.

“I feel that my responsibility is to work for the coaches and with the coaches, to keep my ear to the ground and determine, from the coaches’ point of view, what needs to be done and what direction we want to go,” he said.

“When there is a consensus of opinion, I will act to implement a program. When there is not a consensus of opinion, that’s when we need a national director to make a decision. . .

“But everything I do, I do with the input of the coaches. I’ve been pleased with the amount of input I’ve received, and I hope to get even more letters and phone calls. The phone lines are open.”