Not In Over His Head : Toring Does More Than Tread Water on National Teams

Jim Toring, world traveler, student of art history and the nation’s top teen-age water polo player, peered quizzically from behind a mass of mussed, matted hair.

His style of play during matches on the international level and at Harvard-Westlake High often has been defined as opportunistic. But now the word was being used to describe him when he was dry and dressed. By his coach, no less.

“Jim sees things that are attainable where a lot of kids wouldn’t really go for it. He is a role model at Harvard because he proved opportunistic,” said Rich Corso, who coaches the U.S. Olympic team as well as at Harvard. “He takes advantage of every situation.

“At Harvard, he took advantage of the academic program. In water polo, he used our program as a springboard to the national junior team. Now he’s doing it with the Olympic team.”

At first Toring couldn’t see the connection. The way he figured, it was perfectly natural for him to become a veritable Renaissance man in tight trunks.

Pulling a 3.5 grade-point average while sitting among a sea of high-powered classmates was vastly different from pulling down a rebound in a pool full of world-class water polo players.

Or was it?

Vaulting from a high school team to the junior national team to the senior national team in one year had no link to making a flashy outlet pass, cutting through the water, then taking the ball back and popping it into the net in a single motion.

Or did it?

Toring, 19, sat in the living room of his parents’ Simi Valley home contemplating a complex swirl of opportunities, transitions and decisions. His disheveled hair belies a probing mind, a mind that has been drilled in Harvard’s classrooms as rigorously as his body has in Harvard’s pool.

A bemused look replaced the quizzical one.

“Maybe there is a connection between what I do in the water and out,” he said. “My personality is such that I can never say, ‘OK, this is good enough.’ Being opportunistic means to take the challenge. When something is in front of me, I grab it.”

Sometimes that means pointing in several directions at once, much like the strands of his hair. This summer Toring will focus on leading the junior national team in the World Championships in Cairo in late August. Yet he also will train with the senior national team, which effectively doubles as the Olympic team, and will squeeze in workouts with UCLA, the school he will attend in the fall.

He competed two weeks ago with the senior national team in the Alamo Cup, an international tournament held in Southern California, and spent the spring playing for Harvard and training twice a week with the senior national team.

Talk about waterlogged. Toring logs more pool time than Rideshare. But he has never needed a car pool himself because for four years he has enjoyed the services of an unfailing chauffeur. Toring’s water polo position is driver, but, make no mistake, the primary driver in the Toring family is Hank, Jim’s father.

“I joked at his Harvard graduation that I should have received an award for parent who drove the most miles,” Hank Toring said. “My commitment was that I would drive Jimmy so that he could study or sleep or whatever when commuting.”

Typical father-son itinerary during the spring:

* Leave Simi Valley home for the Harvard campus in North Hollywood at 5 a.m. for 5:45 practice.

* Hank watches practice before heading for Canoga Park High, where he works as an administrator.

* Hank returns to Harvard in time to pick up Jim at 5 p.m. following afternoon practice. Fight traffic and arrive home at 6:30, in time for dinner and studying.

* Schedule varies Tuesday and Thursday when from Harvard they head for Belmont Plaza in Long Beach for senior national team practice. On those nights, they get home at 9 p.m.

Total daily grind: Six hours of school, five-to-seven hours of practice, three hours of studying, two hours of commuting.

“It was the same thing, over and over,” Jim said. “It was really hard, hard on the body and hard on the mind.”

Not that he felt particularly pushed, not by Corso, not by his parents. Dedicating himself to water polo and the rigors of Harvard was his choice, originally and repeatedly.

“The only driving I do for Jimmy is behind the wheel,” Hank said. “When things got tough, we said, ‘You don’t have to go back next year.’ But Jimmy’s goal is to go to the Olympics and he was doing what he had to do.

“Sometimes he’d crash and burn and have to sleep for 24 hours. We’d give him that leeway. He had to catch up and get his brain rejuvenated.”

The way the Torings tell it, Jim made the original decision to attend Harvard, turning his back on water polo power Royal High and close family friend Steve Snyder in the process.

Snyder, the Royal coach, and Hank Toring spent the 1980s building the Simi Water Polo Assn. into an acclaimed club that offered instruction and competition for youngsters ages 6 to 20. Robby Toring, Jim’s older brother, played at Royal in the mid-1980s, and Toring family members immersed their life in the club and the school.

“Steve treated Jimmy with care, letting him tag along with his brother and warm up with the team,” Hank said.

Snyder was present the day Jim’s special talent surfaced. Robby was training at USC in a national development program when Jim hopped in the pool and asked members of the USC freshman team if he could join them. After a few minutes, a crowd had gathered. Jim Toring, 9, was doing things with the ball that captivated an audience.

So, when Hank informed him in 1989 that Jim would begin high school at Harvard rather than Royal, Snyder was stunned. “I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me,” he said at the time. “I saw stars and my knees were weak.”

Toring had seen an opening, his first chance to utilize the opportunism he learned in the water. And sentimentalism would not stand in the way.

“It was a very difficult decision and my parents did not sway me either way,” Toring said. “My friend Josh Mlakar had cancer. I had swam and played water polo with him. Leaving him and the guys I had grown up with and played with. . . . At first, I thought it would be unfair to them. But it would have been unfair to me not to go to Harvard.”

What is Harvard’s appeal? Royal’s water polo program is comparable. It boiled down to deciding between one of the top prep schools in the nation and a typical suburban high school.

“Once we walked on campus and saw the academics, saw teachers interacting with students, we were sold,” Hank said. “It’s like a small, close college campus. We walked down a hallway and there were six or seven boys lying in a circle with their heads in the middle and their books out. Just laying there studying. We were amazed that there were $100 book bags lying all over. There was trust. It was beautiful.

“The chance to go to Harvard was something we could not pass up for Jimmy.”

Playing for Corso, a coach of unquestioned international stature, also had benefits. Corso resisted the temptation of placing the 6-foot-4, 175-pound Toring in the two-meter position, where he could have scored at will over smaller, less aggressive opponents, and insisted he play driver to improve the ballhandling, passing and defensive skills required in international play.

“We never trained him to play at the high school level,” said Corso, who believes Toring could play for the Olympic team through the year 2004. “At times he had to temper his intensity because high school water polo is lethargic compared to the international level.”

Toring does enjoy playing rough, throwing elbows, making contact under water. When a foe gets physical, Toring’s retaliation is instantaneous.

Because he has always played with and against older players, cultivating a fierce style became a matter of survival. As a ninth-grader, he was the youngest ever to make the junior national (19-and-under) team and he has senior national teammates as old as 33.

“On the senior team, I’m a little more reserved,” he said. “I don’t want (my teammates) mad at me. I try to keep up the intensity as much as possible, but I’m not as flamboyant. It’s not physically possible.”

For now, Toring confines dazzling the crowd with ballhandling tricks learned from top European players to junior national competition. During the team’s quest in Cairo for its first World Championship medal, Toring will serve in an unfamiliar role--that of veteran leader.

His experiences playing in Russia, Greece, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico should benefit the team. Although they also have made him somewhat cynical.

“The chances of us winning are slim because water polo is a very political sport,” Toring said. “People don’t want to see the U.S. win. The game is in the refs’ hands and there isn’t much you can do.”

Should an opportunity present itself, however, be sure that Toring will be there to seize it.