He’s an Amphibious Success : Watts Games: Garfield’s Naranjo makes his mark in the 100-yard butterfly and the 800-meter run.

Omar Naranjo used to head to the pool to swim with his club team after track practice at Garfield High last season. The arrangement worked smoothly for several weeks.

That is, until Steve Wright, his track coach at the East Los Angeles school, found out.

Wright had another alternative: Choose track or swimming.

Naranjo, however, believed otherwise.

“I messed up at one of the meets and he told me my swimming was affecting my running,” Naranjo said. “I thought, ‘What I do outside of school is my business.’ I told him I didn’t have to make the choice.”

But Wright made the choice for Naranjo and suspended him from the track team. After meeting with Naranjo’s father, however, Wright agreed to let him return to the team a week later and participate in both sports.

In May, a little more than a year after that encounter, Naranjo, now a senior, placed third in the 100-yard butterfly in the City Section swimming finals and qualified for the State track and field championships in the 800 meters by placing third at the City track finals.

Naranjo, 17, will be among 12,000 high school athletes who will compete in 14 sports in the 25th L.A. Watts Summer Games. The Games, which began Saturday and will continue through next Sunday at various sites throughout Los Angeles, were started after the 1965 Watts riots to bring youths together through athletic competition.

The 5-foot-9, 147-pound Naranjo, who will compete in the track competition Saturday at USC in the Watts Games, planned to participate only in swimming and never intended to run track this season. He took up swimming at age 8, but dropped the sport in the 10th grade when he started running cross-country and track at Garfield.

“After I started running, I was just swimming for fun,” said Naranjo, Garfield’s top cross-country runner last fall. “But this year, I needed a break from track. I decided swimming was going to be my No. 1 priority.”

At first, Richard Morris, Garfield’s swimming coach, was reluctant to let Naranjo swim for fear of repercussions from taking an athlete from the track team.

“I didn’t think it would be a good idea,” Morris said. “I was concerned about hitting a sore point with his track coaches, but (Naranjo) came back, signed up and started working out.”

His practice paid off.

Naranjo dropped 11 seconds from his time in the butterfly during the season, setting a school record of 57.84 seconds and became the first Garfield swimmer to place in three events at City finals.

He set another school record in placing seventh in the 200-yard individual medley relay in 2:13.51 and swam a leg on the Bulldogs’ 200-yard medley-relay team, which finished seventh.

The next day, Naranjo won the 800 meters at the Southeastern Conference track finals despite not running in practice and working out only in the pool.

“I was so tired, I didn’t think I’d be able to do anything,” Naranjo said.

A few weeks earlier, Naranjo, concerned about the welfare of the track team, approached Wright about the possibility of running in meets while still training with the swim team.

Wright welcomed him back with open arms.

“There was no grudge nor animosity,” Wright said. “When he came to see me, I was tickled pink. I told him there was definitely a spot for him, and not to worry and to just come out and do it.”

Running in the last two regular-season meets in the 800 and the 1,600-meter relay, Naranjo helped Garfield extend an 11-year unbeaten streak against cross-town rival Roosevelt and earn second place in the Southeastern Conference.

But even after swimming ended, Naranjo, worried about the lack of time to get into running shape and the possibility of injury that might result from jumping too quickly into hard workouts, continued training in the pool. He ran only twice in practice during the season, but his times on the track still continued to fall.

Naranjo, who had never broken two minutes in the 800 before this season, went on to a personal-best 1:56.51 at the state meet. He will attend a junior college in the fall and is leaning toward running at Glendale College or trying both sports at Cerritos College.

“I never thought I’d have a chance to make it to state,” Naranjo said. “I got everything I wanted out of swimming, and then I still had track. I didn’t I have anything to lose. Luckily, everything came out all right.”