There Is No Time Like the Present for Stanford’s Sanders

While the anthropology professor explained that the expectation level is the primary difference between humans and monkeys, a few students skimmed The Stanford Daily.

Others thumbed through the syllabus, making notations for a research paper that had just been assigned.

Suddenly, though, the professor made a declaration that caught the attention of Summer Sanders, the lanky blonde in the 15th row of the lecture hall.

“Human beings live in a world that doesn’t exist,” he said. “A world of worries and dreams that have not occurred yet. Monkeys live only in the present, not in the past or the future.”

For Sanders, there is no better time than the present. If her freshman year at Stanford is anything like her freshman year--which she calls the best year of her life--at Oakmont High in Roseville, Calif., she has it made.

Moreover, if she thinks ahead to this weekend’s U.S. Open or the World Swimming Championships in January or the 1992 Olympic Games, she’ll go crazy.

“You only have so much worrying in you,” Sanders said. “I hate worrying and being nervous for races. I like to talk and laugh.”

Perhaps Sanders can excuse the swimming world for wanting to press fast forward. Expectations are high since her triple gold-medal performance in the Goodwill Games last July.

Sanders’ clocking of 2 minutes 9.46 seconds in the 200-meter butterfly was the second-fastest ever by an American and the fastest in the world in 1990.

Despite qualifying last in the 200 individual medley, she struck gold again in 2:14.06, the fastest time by an American since Tracy Caulkins’ effort in the 1984 Olympic Games.

And in the meet’s biggest upset, Sanders handed Janet Evans her first defeat since 1986, knocking an astonishing 8.68 seconds off her 400 individual medley best. Sanders’ clocking of 4:39.22 is the fastest in the world this year.

Though Sanders is 3.12 seconds shy of Petra Schneider’s 1982 world record, Stanford Coach Richard Quick believes Sanders eventually will break it.

“There’s absolutely no question in my mind,” said Quick, who also serves as U.S. national team women’s coach. “Summer Sanders has the potential in the 400 individual medley to go under the world record.”

Ironically, Sanders despises that event, a sequence of 100 meters of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle that some coaches call the toughest race because of the stroke versatility and stamina it demands. “If I never swam another 400 IM in my life, I’d probably be the happiest person in the world,” Sanders said. “It is the hardest thing ever.”

Like many medley swimmers, Sanders was an age-group breast-stroker. A pulled muscle prevented her from training in the breast-stroke for a few months and sparked her interest in and mastery of the butterfly.

“Her butterfly rivals the efficiency of Mary T. Meagher,” Quick said of the world record-holder in the 100 and 200 butterfly.

Until recently, Sanders’ second leg was a weak link. But her club coach, Mike Hastings of California Capital Aquatics, developed her into a national-caliber backstroker.

The third leg, breaststroke, has always been a strength.

All that remains for Sanders to improve is her freestyle, a segment that most medley swimmers don’t struggle with because much of their training is in freestyle. Although Sanders’ freestyle is above average, it doesn’t compare to her other strokes.

Her ability to stave off Evans, the world record-holder in three distance freestyle events, was a breakthrough. “(Rivals) always pass me,” Sanders said. “I’ve been passed many times.”

The most painful of those occurred at the 1988 U.S. Olympic trials in Austin, Tex. Sanders led by a body length with 50 meters left when Mary Wayte and Whitney Hedgepeth passed her and became the two representatives the United States sent to Seoul.

At Oakmont High, Sanders’ classmates staged a rally that cheered her up, despite her reluctance to be in the spotlight.

“I didn’t know about the rally,” Sanders said, “because if I’d known about it, I wouldn’t have shown up. I was kind of embarrassed. I started crying up there in front of the whole school. I felt (foolish). But it was nice. . . . I was real honored.”

Although Sanders yearns to be accepted, she wants the option of being unconventional. That is what binds her family in their own definition of togetherness.

Sanders’ parents divorced when she was 7.

“I had no idea what it was,” Sanders said. “All I remember is that my friend’s parents had just gotten divorced. Her parents were buying her all these toys so when my parents told me they were getting divorced I said, ‘Yes. Toys! Woo!’ I had no idea what a divorce was.”

Sanders found out soon enough that it meant moving from one parent’s home to the other every six months.

“Every time I would move from one house to another, I seriously probably couldn’t talk for a day,” she said. “I was so sad. I’d sit there and cry for about most of the day. You get so used to coming home and there’s your dad and you do certain things with him, and then you all of a sudden move and your dad is not there. And me with my swimming, I didn’t see him that much, you know. I maybe talked to him a couple times a week. We’d go out to dinner every once in a while and go to a movie, but it wasn’t the same.”

It became more difficult at 15 when her older brother, Trevor, stopped making the switch.

“That was kind of a bummer when I had to leave him,” Sanders said. “But I like going to my mom’s so I kept at it.”

That has been the key to Sanders’ sunny disposition, maintaining warm relationships with her father, her mother, her brother and her stepfather.

“I’m really close to all the parts of my family,” Sanders said. “I think I want my kids to have the same family I do. God, they’re so laid back. You know, it’s not like you have to do this, otherwise you’ll be a bad person. Like, if you want to, you can. It is totally up to us. When I think about church, it was up to us. My swimming was up to me. “

Summer Sanders, nickname Scum, reveals nothing about swimming on the canvas of collegiate personality, her dorm room walls.

They are plastered with Michael Jordan posters and she wears Air Jordans that Trevor gave her on graduation day, the ones she slept in that night.

Sanders’ roommate didn’t even know she was living with a world-class swimmer until one of Sanders’ swimming friends told her.

Sanders is equally eager to conceal her academic prowess. She makes no mention of her U.S. Swimming Academic All-American status. Sanders is intimidated by Stanford.

“When I first got here, I was real worried because people were using these huge words, and I’m into the simple kind of stuff,” she said. “One day my friend Lea Loveless and I were walking down the hall when someone said something about mendicants.

“I said ‘Lea, my vocabulary is not very good, what is mendicants?’ and she said, ‘Oh God, Summer, it is a singing group.’ ”

It is not something she’s going to worry about, however. Sanders tries not to look back or forward.

Her faithful watch ever on her wrist, she simply follows her demanding academic and athletic schedule, including predawn swims while the rest of the campus sleeps.

Her idea of a good time? Whatever is going on right now.

“I could just sit here in my dorm room looking at my pictures,” Sanders said. “I could listen to music. I could read this Homer book (‘The Iliad’) . . . oh, just kidding.”