Swimming No Longer So Grim for Grims : Mission Viejo meet: After he sat out collegiate season, even a third-place finish feels like a victory.

Steve Grims heard his named called and trotted up to the medal stand, grinning from ear to ear, to receive his award.

True, it was only a third-place finish. And, yes, it came at a meet that was more or less a a practice session for swimmers.

However, after the year Grims has had, it was a triumphant moment.

Grims finished third in the 100-meter freestyle at the Swim Meet of Champions Sunday at the Marguerite Recreation Center in Mission Viejo. Bjorn Zikarsky of West Germany won the race with a time of 50.96 seconds and Dirk Bludau of East Germany was second with a time of 51.44.

But it was Grims, who swam a 51.58, who felt like a winner.

“You can’t believe how good it feels for me to do well in a meet,” said Grims, a graduate of Foothill High School. “With all the good swimmers here and the people watching, it’s really exciting. It helped me swim a lot faster and has given me confidence again.”

This was only the second competitive meet for Grims in the last year. After his junior year at the University of Iowa, he transfered to USC and had to sit out the 1990 collegiate season.

By missing out on the competition against other swimmers, Grim lost his edge, which is important to sprinters. He finished a disappointing 16th in both the 50 and 100 freestyles at the U.S. Swimming Shortcourse Nationals last March in Nashville.

“I was beginning to wonder if I had peaked as a swimmer,” Grims said. “I was really frustrated and lost a lot of confidence.”

A year ago, Grims was eighth among collegiate swimmers in both the 50 and 100 freestyles. However, he was unhappy with his situation at Iowa, where he received only a partial scholarship.

He went to the Iowa coach to see if his scholarship could be increased. Grims said that his request was turned down.

“I thought my performance warranted a full scholarship,” said Grims, 22. “It was really difficult on me financially otherwise. I think they felt they had me, because there was no way I would transfer with only one year of eligibility left.”

Grims left anyway to go to USC.

“I was homesick, too,” Grims said. “I’d grown up in Southern California and three years of Iowa was enough.”

But by transfering, Grims missed a year of competition on the collegiate level. And, because he didn’t belong to a club team, he didn’t swim competitively for more than eight months.

The only swimming he could do was workouts with the team.

“It got very frustrating and boring,” Grims said. “I really wanted to get back into the competition again.”

Grims attributes his poor performance at the nationals to the fact he hadn’t been in a race for so long. He also wondered if he had anything left in the sport.

But with the help of Dave Salo, Grims has begun to rebuild his career.

Salo, the sprint coach at USC, has worked with Grims and nine other swimmers this year. And his orthodox workout methods have had a positive effect.

Unlike other coaches, whose workouts include up 20,000 yards of swimming per day, Salo believes less is better. His workouts include only 3,000 yards per day.

“It’s the idea of quality time in the pool as opposed to quantity,” Slao said. “It works real well for sprinters because it gets them used to the quick pace. But I think it could work with all events.”

It has worked for Grims, who on Saturday set a meet record in the 50 freestyle. His time of 23.23 in the prelims broke Tom Jager’s mark of 23.74, which he set in 1989.

Grims also won the 100 freestyle final with a time of 23.28. Zikarsky, who also swims from Salo and USC, finished second.

“I feel a lot better about my swimming going into my senior year after this meet,” Grims said. “I know I still have some good swims in me. After that? I don’t know. My mom keeps telling me to make the Olympic team.”

Zikarsky came back Sunday to set a meet record in the 100 freestyle preliminaries with a time of 50.83. The previous record of 51.07 was held by Peter Rohde.

In other events Sunday, Janet Evans won her fifth and sixth events of the meet.

Evans won the 1,500 freestyle with a time of 1:61.73 and the 200 freestyle in 2:04.43. In the 1,500, she finished more than than 33 seconds ahead of second-place Jana Henke of East Germany.

Ron Karnaugh set a meet record in the 200 individual medley. His time of 2:04.16 broke Alex Baumann’s mark of 2:04.24.