SWIMMING / THERESA MUNOZ : Stewart’s Calculations Weren’t on the Money

When Melvin Stewart announced that he would pass up his senior year at Tennessee to prepare for the 1992 Olympic Games, he left the jurisdiction of the NCAA and became eligible for a monthly training stipend from U.S. Swimming Inc., the governing body of the sport.

Stewart, the world record-holder in the 200-meter butterfly, planned to continue training under Volunteer Coach John Trembly, his coach the last six seasons.

Trembly, noting that Stewart was being rewarded financially for swimming, asked Stewart to pay him a monthly fee for coaching him.

Stewart declined and joined his summer team, Las Vegas Gold, year-round.

“I didn’t know how to take it,” Stewart said. “I was hurt. Maybe I shouldn’t have been hurt, but I can’t separate personal from business and it would have affected me in the water.”

With the exception of college coaches in season, most coaches are indirectly paid by swimmers in the form of team dues. Trembly’s suggestion was not without precedent, however.

Mark Spitz, for example, pays UCLA Coach Ron Ballatore a monthly fee to coach him.

Stewart, who said he could not afford to pay Trembly, is an unusual case because he has never paid team dues. His father, a former recreation director for PTL Club president Jim Bakker, did not have the money.

Other families chipped in for Stewart’s entry fees and travel expenses, and a family in Charlotte, N.C., paid his prep school tuition.

Although Stewart may hit the jackpot yet--if he sets a world record in a U.S. national championship or U.S. Open, Las Vegas Gold sponsor Bob Stupak will put $100,000 in a trust fund for him--he regrets having to leave Trembly.

“J.T. and I had a great rapport,” Stewart said. “I thought he would support my decision to forgo my senior year for the Olympics. You have to put blinders on to get ready for the Olympics. You can’t have any distractions like (college) dual meets and conference meets.”

Stewart’s coach now is Ira Klein, who will bring a full contingent of Las Vegas Gold senior level swimmers, Stewart among them, to the L.A. Invitational July 22-25 at USC.

Since announcing his decision to leave Tennessee, and then Trembly, and after trying to persuade U.S. Swimming to allow him to swim the U.S. national meet and the Pan Pacific Games, Stewart said his life has become a “soap opera.”

His latest battle involves obtaining permission to miss the first four days of a mandatory camp designed to prepare the U.S. team for the Pan Pacific Games, the priority meet of the season for U.S. Swimming.

“You’re with your coach six months out of the year and laying your aerobic base, that’s going to make or break you,” Stewart said. “You can’t pull a team together in two weeks and make them better. If you are going to be a team it is because of strong personalities and the right chemistry.”

Stewart falls into the category of strong personalities and in this case he is up against similar strains.

“Talking to Dennis Pursley (national team director), Bill Maxson (U.S. Swimming president) and Ray Essick (U.S. Swimming executive director) is like talking to a brick wall,” Stewart said. “They do listen, but they don’t change their mind.”

Mike Barrowman, the 200-meter breaststroke world record-holder, and a close friend of Stewart, is also battling the powers that be.

Barrowman is committed to the U.S. national meet in part because he prefers to be coached by Jozsef Nagy, who is not part of the U.S. staff for the Pan Pacific Games.

“If I have only one opportunity for a world record, no way am I trusting it to a coach who hasn’t worked with me,” Barrowman said.

On the flip side, U.S. Swimming requires little of its national team members, compared to what other competitive swimming countries demand.

If Barrowman, Stewart or both swim in the national meet and are then banned from the Pan Pacific Games, Pursley said it may be too late to replace them, since the next-best swimmers are committed to the Pan American Games, Aug. 3-18 in Havana.

Swimming Notes

Summer Sanders, 1991 world champion in the 200 butterfly, has limited her training because of tendinitis in her right shoulder. ‘I’ve been swimming every other day, and doing a lot of kicking, running and biking to keep my aerobic level up,” said Sanders, who plans to resume full training in two weeks if the pain eases. . . . Mission Viejo’s Eric Diehl, 18, is sitting out what should be his first year of college to prepare for the 1992 Olympic trials with Nadadore Coach Terry Stoddard. After enduring a series of coaching changes on the Texas Aquatics team in Ft. Worth, Diehl knows the advantages of consistent training. That is why his mother, Gaby, was willing to move with him two years ago to Mission Viejo. Diehl’s father, Larry, couldn’t leave his job in Texas, but he is a frequent visitor.

Encinitas’ Karol Fano, coach of rising star Kari Lyderson, escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1967 while traveling in Austria with the national water polo team. . . . Mike Mason of Santa Maria High, the 100 breaststroke titlist in the Meet of Champions, will compete in the Canadian national meet, July 31-Aug. 4 in Vancouver. The top two finishers in each event will be selected for the Canadian Pan Pacific team. Mason, 17, was born in the United States but lived in Canada for eight years and competes internationally for Canada.