These Swimmers Find Strength Without the Numbers : High school: To seek success, free-lance athletes endure competition alone amid a team sport.

Unable to find a sympathetic silkscreen artist or consoling cap maker, the Capistrano Valley Christian and Brethren Christian swim teams give their gear the personal touch.

Brethren Christian’s Mackinley Culp recently learned what Capistrano Valley Christian’s Ali Ladeda-Hansen found out a year ago: Team sales don’t mean much to a salesman when the team in question has a single athlete.

As a result, Culp’s team suit is whatever she drags out of the closet--she favors a suit that’s close to the green shade of her school colors--and Ladeda-Hansen pens the initials “CVC” on her own swim caps.

Ladeda-Hansen and Culp are unique in high school swimming circles. Because their respective schools don’t offer the sport, they free lance.

“It’s not a prevalent thing, probably because there’s a lot you have to do,” said Marcella Flippin, Brethren Christian’s girls’ athletic director. “But you can do it. Any time a school or a league doesn’t provide a team, you’re allowed to go free lance.”

William Clark, an administrator for the Southern Section, said 17 schools in the section, three in Orange County, applied for free-lance status in swimming this season. The Olympic League doesn’t offer swimming, forcing Santa Ana’s Calvary Chapel, which had its first team this year, to petition the section as a free-lance team.

Jeff Zippi, Capistrano Valley Christian’s athletic director, said the process to acquire free-lance status is “pretty easy.”

Not for the athletes. Once the swimmer goes through the process and the section grants free-lance status, athletes must swim in six meets a season--any combination of dual meets, triangular meets or invitationals is OK. There are plenty of meets out there, but not always enough lanes.

“Mackinley made up to 20 calls in one day this week just to find fifth and sixth schools where she could swim,” said Flippin, who accompanies Culp to her meets. “She didn’t get a lot of cooperation.”

Said Culp: “Trying to swim as a third party, a lot of coaches weren’t understanding. It was frustrating. I was about to say forget it, when I remembered my goal.”

This is the first year Culp, who transferred from Cypress High, has competed free lance. Ladeda-Hansen won the 200-yard freestyle and 100-yard butterfly in the 1992 2-A section championships and is a veteran of the system. She also knows the shortcuts.

“It’s usually not a problem if I show up and use Lane 7,” said Ladeda-Hansen, who will attend Auburn on a swimming scholarship. “It’s not like I’m scoring points for anyone.”

It is a strange feeling, they say, to be on the starting block surrounded by swimmers who wonder who you are and what you’re doing there.

“They announce you, but you’re in a different cap and suit as everyone else,” Culp said. “(Other swimmers) want to know how fast you are and if you’re going to be next to them. I have to go through the same story every time. They always say that’s cool.”

But why go to all the trouble in the first place? Culp swims for the Golden West swim club in Huntington Beach and Ladeda-Hansen is a member of the Mission Viejo Natadores. Why not just swim for a club, which is where the competition is anyway, and not fuss with being a free-lancer?

“She initiated it,” Flippin said of Culp. “She went through it because she really wanted to swim for her school. She loves Brethren.”

Culp, now a junior, qualified for the 50 free as a freshman at Cypress, but sat out last season after she transferred. It depressed her to watch her club teammates train and taper for the section meet a year ago.

“I decided that since I put so much time and energy into swimming club,” Culp said, “I could put my talent and energy into swimming for my school.”

Ladeda-Hansen is finding the glamour of her free-lance efforts has worn off in the second season. Still, her swimming experience wouldn’t be complete without high school as a part of it.

“It’s not as exciting as last year,” she said. “I wish I had a team. But swimming for my school was something I wanted to do all my life.

“It’s something I had to do. I haven’t heard of anyone in club who doesn’t swim school. I just didn’t think about not doing it.”

By swimming free lance, you miss the support of your teammates, which is one reason Ladeda-Hansen prefers club competition.

“Last year, I won two events (at section) and there was no one there from my school,” she said. “It was just me and my mom. It was weird; I’m used to having a team with a lot of spirit around.”

But school spirit is growing slowly at Brethren Christian, where the newspaper had written about Culp and the yearbook is devoting a page to her efforts. And Culp’s friends are having T-shirts made, which they will wear to the section meet--she has already qualified in the 200 and 500 frees, the 100 fly and hopes to qualify in the 100 free.

At Capistrano Valley Christian, the student body tries to support Ladeda-Hansen; it’s just not sure how.

“It’s funny. People walk by me and say, ‘There goes the swim team,’ ” she said. “But they don’t understand if I don’t win. Like a top-16 finish at national is good, but if you tell them your time, they don’t know what it means.”

But Capistrano Valley Christian does know the meaning of good publicity and the school got plenty of it after Ladeda-Hansen’s successful 1992 season.

“Our involvement is to provide her the opportunity without stretching the budget,” Zippi said. “What do we get out of it? It’s an honor, with the two first places she took last year. That meant we came in 15th in CIF. A lot of other teams we have finished in the sweet 16, and here we are coming in 15th with just Ali.”

Ladeda-Hansen has qualified for the section meet in the 100, 200 and 500 frees, the 100 back and the 100 fly this year. Because swimmers are limited to two individual events, she probably will stick to the 100 fly and the 200 free, events she won last year.

But this year, those will be harder to win. Because of her success last year, she will move up to Division I.

“It’s going to be tough this year. There are some really fast girls,” Ladeda-Hansen said. “But I wanted to do it. It’s better to say you won Division I rather than Division V.”

And better to swim for your school than not swim at all.

“At least now they’ll hear the name Brethren Christian over the loudspeaker,” Culp said.

And no one needs a personalized T-shirt or cap to hear that.