SWIMMING / THERESA MUNOZ : Rose Bowl Aquatics Could Be a Mission Viejo North

Eighteen years after Mark Schubert started to build Mission Viejo into a national powerhouse, Brian Murphy is beginning a similar challenge at the AAF Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena.

All of the ingredients are present for Murphy’s Rose Bowl Aquatics team to develop into one of U.S. Swimming’s best clubs. Its $6.5-million facility, which opened June 25, is second to none, and the available talent extends from La Canada in the north to Arcadia in the east, Montebello in the south and Culver City in the west.

Since Murphy moved his Arroyo Seco team into the center and changed the name, its roster has grown from 70 swimmers to 170. There is also a beginning program that will feed the club its graduates. At capacity, the center can handle 300 swimmers while maintaining a coach-swimmer ratio of 38-1.

“I really do see us (as a national power),” Murphy said. “After we’re in operation for a year, I’ll have a better idea how long it will take.”

So far, the team has only two national-caliber senior swimmers, sprinter Rob Grainer and distance freestyler Dan Kanner.

Unlike Mission Viejo, the Rose Bowl club won’t be combining residential development with the recruitment of swimmers. But if the team makes an impact at the national senior level, Murphy wouldn’t be surprised to see families move into the area or send their children to live with the family of a team member.

“But you don’t want to count on that,” he said. “Your real success has to come in the community. You have to teach them to swim and move them up the ranks.”

The facility alone has already accorded the team national attention. “It’s the best facility I’ve ever seen,” Stanford men’s Coach Skip Kenney said. “I’m so excited about it because I really think it’s going to help California swimming.”

Kenney was one of dozens of coaches who saw slides of the facility at a presentation at U.S. Swimming’s national convention last month in Pittsburgh. The coaches and administrators were duly impressed, awarding the Rose Bowl facility its inaugural bid, the 1992 U.S. Outdoor Junior Olympics West meet.

“It was a very big coup for us,” Murphy said. “We made an impact already.”

As one of only three facilities in the United States with two 50-meter pools--the others are in Indianapolis and Boca Raton, Fla.--the Rose Bowl center qualifies for consideration as a host for the World Championships, the Pan American Games and the Olympic Games.

Add Rose Bowl: Terry Wilson, president and executive director of the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center, recently announced his intention to resign effective Dec. 31.

Wilson was instrumental in raising money for the construction of the facility, which was built on public land with public and private funds from sources such as the city of Pasadena, the state of California and the Amateur Athletic Foundation, which distributes the surplus from the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles for the development of amateur athletics.

A tip from track: Swimming could take a lesson from track and field and implement unannounced, out-of-competition drug testing.

The Athletics Congress, the national governing body of track and field, has adopted this method. Since July 1, 1989, it has randomly tested the top 25 U.S. athletes in each event.

Richard Quick, coach of the U.S. national swim team and the Stanford women’s team, is a strong supporter of such testing. “The major benefit from steroids is that you can train so much more effectively so many more times,” Quick said. “And you can get off them in time before the competition.”

While there is conflicting scientific evidence concerning the benefits to be derived from steroid use, Dr. Robert Voy, former U.S. Olympic Committee chief medical officer, concurs with Quick that their qualities as a recovery agent have been proven.

“The one thing we know is that they negate the negative nitrogen balance that comes with exercise,” Voy said. “That means you can recover faster. The other aspect is a tremendous psychological advantage. It causes male macho aggressiveness, allowing a training regimen that is twice as hard.”

Without an out-of-competition testing program, Quick fears that steroid users--he suspects Chinese female swimmers in particular--won’t be caught.

Voy said: “Only someone who misjudges a dose or gets greedy and takes too much, a la Ben Johnson, is going to get caught. With an eight- to 10-week cycle, they can get off within two weeks of the competition date and still get a lot of the positive effects of the drug.”

Swimming Notes

Defending NCAA Division I women’s champion Texas received top billing in the College Swimming Coaches Assn. of America’s inaugural poll. Stanford, which lost to the Longhorns by 9.5 points in last year’s championships, is ranked No. 2. California, UCLA and USC round out the top five. . . . The U.S. national team will get together for a training camp Nov. 1-4 in Dallas to prepare for the World Championships Jan. 7-13 at Perth, Australia.

Bill Maxson was elected U.S. Swimming president at the organization’s national convention Sept. 22 in Pittsburgh. The 39-year-old insurance executive was a former coach at Southeast Missouri State University. . . . Air Force Col. Micki King Hogue was elected president of U.S. Diving. Hogue was the 1972 Olympic three-meter springboard gold medalist. . . . Sandra Baldwin earned the U.S. Swimming award for contribution to the sport. Baldwin, president of U.S. Swimming in 1984-86, was instrumental in the passage of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978.

U.S. Swimming released its 1990 Academic All-American team, composed of swimmers in grades 10-12 who have a grade-point average of 3.5 or better and, by time standard, are among the top 2,000 swimmers, regardless of age, in the nation. The Californians by team: Mission Viejo--Eric Diehl, Ryan Cox, Shanna Cox, Robert Rojas, Kevin Hendricks; Rose Bowl Aquatics--Dan Kanner; Bellflower--Brian Jacobson; Class Aquatics--Jason Stelle; Team Santa Monica--Steve Warner; Conejo-Simi Valley--Marten Duncan; Salinas Valley--Brian Williams; Buena--Ben Pecht, Lydia Barbie; Walnut Creek--Nicole DeMan, Bill Rainusso, Christopher Lane, Jim Wyles; California Capital--Summer Sanders, Jeremy Szymanowski; Southern California Aquatics--Patrick Collins, Sionainn Marcoux, Laura Ellison, Heather Marks; Santa Maria--Randy Hartley; Porterville--Stephanie Raymond.