Full Mettle Jacket: National Team’s Coat Makes Difference for Eskilsson : Kayaking: Foreign exchange student at Newport Harbor sticks with sport after seeing Sweden’s uniform.

Put yourself in the same icy boat with Thomas Eskilsson and it’s easy to understand the dilemma he faced four years ago.

Eskilsson, a foreign exchange student from Sweden who has attended Newport Harbor High School since last fall, was struggling to decide whether to quit kayaking, a sport he had practiced for eight years.

“Sometimes in Sweden, it’s very, very hard to go down and kayak,” said Eskilsson, who lives in Malmo in southern Sweden. “It’s cold and it’s very, very windy. The water comes up and gets in your jacket and freezes. The boat’s all icy. You think, ‘Oh, I’d rather stay in bed.’ ”

Complicating the decision was Eskilsson’s success at team handball, which is practiced in a cozy gym with teammates to provide inspiration.

“I was doing well in handball and I wasn’t doing so well in kayaking,” Eskilsson said. “I was very, very close to quitting kayaking.”

Then, out of the blue and dressed in blue, arrived the Swedish national kayaking team to quickly change his mind. Eskilsson was competing in Sweden’s 1987 junior national kayaking championships when he saw the national team wearing its team jackets.

The blue jackets, with “Sweden” across the back in yellow letters, weren’t fancy, but they made an impression on Eskilsson, who decided he would concentrate on kayaking.

“They (team members) came in with their jackets on with ‘Sweden’ on the back and I said to my mom, ‘One time in my life I am going to wear one of those jackets,’ ” Eskilsson said. “That really made a difference in my life. I wanted to have one of those jackets.”

He even made a good-natured bet with his mother, who teased that he wouldn’t make the team, for dinner at a fancy restaurant. She lost. The next year Eskilsson earned the right to wear a jacket when he made the junior national team.

Eskilsson, who has been a team member every year since, has developed into one of the best junior kayakers in the world. The 18-year-old won the Swedish junior national title in the 500 meters in 1988 and 1989 and placed sixth in the event in the 1989 junior world championships in Canada.

Eskilsson hopes his stay in Newport Beach, where he can take advantage of mild weather and work out daily, helps add to those accomplishments. He is only a short bike ride from Newport Aquatics Center in Newport Beach, where he trains, and his coach in Sweden sends him workouts.

“I think this is the best place in the world to practice kayaking,” said Eskilsson, whose sister, Anna, is also attending Newport Harbor High School and staying with the same host family. “I’ve never practiced so much in the winter time. I’ve never been so prepared as this year.”

Eskilsson’s competitiveness and preparation could prove to be a winning combination.

His foreign exchange host father, Ralph Whitford, said Eskilsson was in a bad mood for two hours after Newport Harbor’s football team lost in the Southern Section playoffs. It’s not unusual for an athlete to be upset after a loss, but Eskilsson wasn’t even on the team.

“He just has this competitive spirit that nothing is going to get in his way,” said Whitford, whose son, Bill, is a youth development director for the U.S. Canoe and Kayaking Assn. in Hawaii and helped arrange Eskilsson’s stay in Newport Beach.

“Nobody wants to lose, but I hate it,” said Eskilsson, a starter and the third-leading scorer on Newport Harbor’s soccer team. “If someone is better than me, if I work harder, I might be as well as them. Then, when you’re as well as them, it’s the guy who has the best shape of the day or the best race of the day.

“I’ve been lucky. I’ve had the best race of the day most of the time.”

Peter Orban, a member of the Swedish national kayaking team, expects that trend to continue. Orban, who has known Eskilsson for eight years, also trains at Newport Beach.

“Physically, he’s perfect,” Orban said of the 6-foot-1 Eskilsson. “He’s light, but he’s still strong. He takes off very fast. I think he can be the best paddler in the world in a couple of years.”

Such a timetable would suit Eskilsson, who hopes to reach his loftiest goal of competing in the 1992 Olympics at Barcelona, Spain. His heart tells him to shoot for the ’92 Games, his head says the ’96 Olympics.

“Ninety-two might be too early,” said Eskilsson, who will resume his studies and training at a school near Stockholm when he returns to Sweden in July. “I’ll just be 20 then and most of the best guys are 28 or 29.”

Any feat that Eskilsson accomplishes, though, may not surpass the feeling he had when he put on the national team jacket for the first time.

“That was something I will never forget,” Eskilsson said. “The first time I went out with my jacket and competed, I never had such a strong feeling for my country. I took the jacket in my hand and I said to my mom, ‘I worked hard and this is the result.’

“I was so happy. And she was so happy even though she lost the bet.”