REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY : A Contrary Perspective and a Fluid Backstroke Propel Agoura’s Jason Stelle

Jason Stelle’s career is going backward fast, and that’s just the way he likes it. As one of the best high school backstrokers in the country, Stelle has learned to make progress in reverse.

Backstrokers take a different perspective on swimming. While other swimmers spend their life looking at the bottom of pools, backstrokers gaze at the sky.

In “A Room With a View,” Mr. Emerson calls the blue sky above the best view of all, but Stelle is looking and shooting for the stars. His vision extends to junior nationals, senior nationals and beyond.

“It’s a drive I have,” said Stelle, who lives in Westlake Village and will be a junior at Agoura High. “I want to be the best I can be in the water because that’s where my ability is, whereas on land I’ll sit back and watch everyone else.”

Also one of the leading scorers on the school water polo team, Stelle takes to the water better than Darryl Hannah. Yet earlier this summer he thought he might be in over his head.

In early July, Stelle developed flu symptoms as he prepared for the Los Angeles Invitational. He continued his two-a-day workouts, though, and said he “didn’t think much of it.”

However, his training suffered. “I thought maybe I was out of shape,” he said. “This summer I really thought about (swimming) and had my doubts. I wondered if there is such a thing as burnout.”

Finally, Stelle stepped on a scale and realized he had lost nearly 15 pounds during his illness and that he was carrying a wispy 154 pounds on his six-foot frame. Only then did he take a few days away from swimming, but he had failed to qualify for senior nationals and had fallen behind in his workouts for junior nationals.

With his training base depleted, Stelle concentrated on speed and technique in the weeks leading to the junior national meet.

“This summer has been really tough, so we just stepped back and looked at the stroke and started working on it,” Stelle said of his workouts with Corey Stanbury, coach of the CLASS swim team. “At first we looked at the length and catching water. Then we looked at speed and turnover. I used to have a hitch in my stroke. I would overreach a lot.”

With his stroke straightened out, Stelle overcame his junior national jinx last week in Austin, Tex. After failing to place in his first two appearances, he earned second in the 100-meter backstroke and ninth in the 200 backstroke.

“I got the monkey off my back this summer,” Stelle said.

Stelle has developed rapidly as a backstroker. He finished second in the 100-yard backstroke in the 1988 Southern Section 2-A meet as a freshman and set a 2-A record in the 100 backstroke last season when he was named a high school All-American.

He also swam the backstroke leg on Agoura High’s Southern Section-champion 200 medley relay team. Backstrokers always lead off medley relays, and the other three members of the relay appreciate having Stelle, the nation’s eighth-ranked public school prep in the 100 backstroke, getting them out of the blocks.

“You can depend on him,” said Kevin Driscoll, an Agoura High junior who swims butterfly on the relay. “It’s a good feeling to be way ahead after the backstroke.”

Stelle’s teammates also depend on him in water polo. A power guard-driver, Stelle started as a sophomore and made the All-Frontier League team.

“It’s sort of intimidating to other players when you pass them doing backstroke,” Stelle said.

Many national-caliber swimmers believe that they need to train year-round and stockpile training yardage, but Stelle refuses to give up his water polo.

“I don’t see it as a drawback,” Stelle said. “It’s a great break from swimming. It’s more of a team sport.”

Scoring goals and setting goals come naturally to Stelle.

“My whole motivation is goals,” Stelle said. “You’ve got to set goals every year, even every workout. You set goals for every set. I always try to make it fairly realistic but pretty high, almost to the point where you can almost reach it.”

“Every night I try to visualize my race. I think about getting that perfect start, getting out in front, feeling no pain.”

Only 16 years old, Stelle qualified for the Senior Short Course Nationals last spring. He placed 20th in the 200-yard backstroke and 28th in the 100-yard backstroke.

Stelle, a 3.8 student who already has received correspondence from Harvard, said that he hopes to swim for a perennial swimming power like Stanford or Texas or remain in Southern California.

“I’d like to stay fairly close,” he said. “I’m still concentrating on these last two years of high school.”

Wherever he goes to college and however far his swimming takes him, Stelle will have backed into his success . . . quickly.