The Long and the Short of It : Swimming: CLASS Aquatics coach says the construction of a 50-meter pool could be used as a springboard for his club to gain national prominence.

At age 3, Ricky Rushko is not old enough to care about the future of youth swimming in the Valley area.

He is old enough, however, to swim--and therein lies what CLASS Aquatics Coach Bud McAllister believes is one of the keys to raising his Calabasas-based team to the level of successful Orange County swim teams: molding youngsters into swimmers--and identifying the ones who have the ability and drive to become champions.

It’s a daunting job, but it’s not even the biggest task facing McAllister. What is most important to making CLASS a first-class organization is building a 50-meter pool in which Ricky’s older counterparts can train.

“I don’t look at the Valley as being much weaker than Orange County in swimming,” said McAllister, who coached 1988 Olympic triple gold medalist Janet Evans three years ago in Fullerton. “There have been some very good swimmers from this area. The biggest obstacle I can see is the number of 50-meter, long-course pools that we have access to.”

The obstacle looms large when Orange County successes are considered. The Mission Viejo Nadadores, a national power swimming team for which McAllister served as assistant coach from 1980-85, have had 23 U. S. Olympic swimming and diving medalists since 1976, albeit some of that talent has been imported from around the country and the world. The list includes Greg Louganis, who won four Olympic gold medals for diving, and swimmer Mary T. Meagher, a triple gold medalist in 1984.

The Valley, meanwhile, has not produced any Olympians, and while small pools are not the only reason, that is perceived as a factor.

“Let’s just say that I’m a big believer in training long course when you have to swim long course,” said McAllister, the American Swimming Coaches Assn. Coach of the Year in 1987 and ’88.

Right now, CLASS, probably the strongest Valley youth swimming program, and almost all of the other clubs in the area are severely limited because of the lack of a nearby 50-meter pool. And it is quite possible that 10 years from now--when young Ricky Rushko might be competing in meets himself--nothing will have changed.

Enclosed by four brown brick walls, highlighting the postcard background of brown mountains, green trees, and blue skies, Calabasas High’s 25-yard pool gives no hint that it is the source of trouble. And for the short-course season during winter and spring, it is not. But with summer and fall come long-course meets--emphasizing the need for 50-meter pools appropriate for international competition rather than the U.S. standard of 25 yards.

“What we really need is some kind of sugar daddy to come up and make a (financial) commitment,” said Richard DeFronzo, the president of CLASS. “Without a doubt, the biggest obstacle facing us is that the nearest 50-meter pool is 25 miles away in Simi Valley. And this situation doesn’t have a clear-cut solution.”

CLASS’s financial saviors would have to be able to spend about $1 million to build a pool and to face the fact that they could not be repaid monetarily, only in championships.

“There is a lot involved in trying to build a swimming pool,” said DeFronzo, whose 14-year-old son, Matt, swims for CLASS. “We’ve talked to developers and they don’t want to get involved because of the responsibility involved. I talked to some big companies in the area and none are headquartered here. That means the company’s budget is somewhere else. It’s hard to expect small-time businesses to come forward, but we need a small company. . . . We need someone to make a commitment.”

Said former CLASS Coach Martin Edwards, who heads Conejo Simi Aquatics in Simi Valley: “The value of property in the Valley is so high that no company is going to want to put a pool in a gold mine.”

So while a 50-meter pool in Pasadena recently was built partially with minority-aid grants and yet another large pool in Mission Viejo was supported by large-scale fund-raising and corporate sponsorship, the Valley area remains dry in that respect.

“This area’s too affluent to get a 50-meter pool sponsored by the national government,” McAllister said. “And I don’t think corporate sponsorship would work up here. Swimming is not as much a tradition up here as it is down there (in Mission Viejo), and it will take a number of years to try and build the community awareness up to that level.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” DeFronzo added. “If nothing happens, the team will limp along as it has been. We’ll make the best of it.”

Limp may be too harsh a word. The team has grown quickly, from 45 swimmers last August when McAllister arrived, to 125.

A member of the 1988 Olympic staff, McAllister came to CLASS with a resume that included the stint at Mission Viejo and four years (1985-88) as coach of the Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team.

It was at Fullerton that McAllister coached Evans and Canadian Olympian Darren Ward en route to being twice named coach of the year.

Ron Scott drives 45 minutes from his Culver City-area home so that his son Ronnie, 13, can swim for McAllister. Many other parents drive similar distances.

“When I first heard about Bud’s experience with Evans and Ward, that was the turning point,” Scott said. “Ronnie is serious about what he’s doing and this was the best opportunity for him.”

The younger Scott is one of many swimmers in the Calabasas pool who have been ranked in the top 16 in the country in their age groups.

Jason Stelle, who has one year remaining at Agoura High, swam the 100-meter backstroke in 50.8 seconds this year to set a Southern Section 2-A Division record. Stelle’s time, a second off the national high school record, was the second fastest by a U. S. high school swimmer. He has been a member of CLASS for eight of its 11 years.

“He’s too young for the ’92 Olympics, but beyond that, Jason has a legitimate shot,” McAllister said.

Stelle would be the first Olympic swimmer or diver from the area. Kristine Quance, 14, of Northridge set a national age-group record in the 200-yard breaststroke in March. She and Stelle are considered the Valley’s leading Olympic hopefuls in the sport.

Among the other prominent swimmers at CLASS are 11-year-old John Wong and Stanford junior Julie Martin. Wong is another top-16 swimmer and, two months ago, he swam the 500-yard freestyle in 5 minutes 15 seconds. Martin, who placed fifth in the 1988 U.S. Olympics Trials in both the 400- and the 200-meter freestyle, will return to CLASS this summer after being away for a year and a half because of injuries.

Breaststroker Brent Woods, who trained under McAllister in Florida and followed him here last year, placed 15th in the U. S. Senior national championships in March. Woods, though, is on his way back to Florida because “it was too difficult being away from his parents,” according to McAllister.

Interestingly enough, former CLASS coach Edwards has a 50-meter pool, the Rancho Simi pool to which CLASS trudges in the summer months, yet doesn’t regard it as such a big deal.

“So much is geared to the national-level swimmers at CLASS,” said Edwards, who only uses the 50-meter pool for five practices a week--as compared to the 11 workouts a week that some CLASS swimmers go through. “This program at Simi is more me; it’s more opportunity for everybody. A kid breaking records is great, but that doesn’t help the rest of the community.”

It’s almost as if McAllister and Edwards should switch locations, each taking the pool that matches his program.

“I think it’s a case of different priorities,” Edwards said. “They have the talent at CLASS, they have the coach. To get the job done they want to get done there, to build a nationally competitive team, they need a facility.”

Valley swimming also needs publicity, according to another local coach--and that only comes from having a swimmer from the region make the Olympics.

“We need to get an Olympian from this area,” said Steve Reardon, who coaches Quance at Northridge-based Valley Aquatics, “and I think we might have a couple of kids now who can do it.”

All of which, of course, is more difficult without the benefit of a 50-meter pool.

Trying to build a first-rate organization in the Valley is not a hopeless cause. Just ask Rushko and the two other 3-year-olds McAllister taught to swim as part of his extensive lesson program.

It’s just the Valley’s pools that don’t hold enough water.