Rose Reinvests His Stock With Nadadores : Swimming: He happily gives up the 9-to-5 business world to return to poolside in Mission Viejo.

Bill Rose is stalking a pool deck again and it’s as if he never left. Of course, he never really did leave. Not in spirit, anyway.

For most of the past decade, Rose has been a stockbroker, but the only bonds he really took stock in were the ones he had forged with the swimmers, the young men and women he had motivated to push their bodies and minds to the limit day after day.

Rose became addicted to the high he got from watching his proteges accomplish feats the swimmers once believed impossible in the late ‘60s. He turned the 37-member Pacific Aquatic Club in Stockton into a thriving team of 235. In 1974, he took over a team in DeAnza, Calif., that had been scoreless in the national championships. Two years later, its membership had swelled from 320 to 647 and DeAnza finished fourth at the nationals.

He also coached at the University of the Pacific and Arizona State, but, in an attempt to save his marriage, Rose left the smell of chlorine, the predawn practices and the water-logged kids he loved for a more normal, suit-and-tie, 9-to-5 existence. He was a good stockbroker, too, earning promotions into management and a lot more money than any swim coach.

But he was never totally happy.

And his marriage eventually failed.

“Right after I left swimming, I was back involved in a lot of ways,” he said. “I was announcing at nationals and other meets. I was always close to the sport.

“My greatest strength has always been getting people to do things they never believed, or even wanted to do before, and I never wanted to get out of coaching. But it was a domestic problem I was trying to deal with and, obviously, it didn’t work anyway.”

So now, Rose is back in shorts and sandals, cajoling the Mission Viejo Nadadores to take a few more strokes despite muscles screaming for rest. A bright sun glares off his bald head, but it pales in comparison to the glint in his eye.

Rose is nearing his first anniversary as coach of the Nadadores, but he’s celebrating his life every day. He hops out of bed at 3 a.m., plops into his office chair before 4 and plans the day’s workout schedule with the relish of a guy putting together an itinerary for his dream vacation.

“Eventually, it came down to a decision about what I wanted to do with my life,” he said. “When the chance to coach here came up, with this team’s tradition and potential, I said, ‘Forget it, I don’t have to be rich. All I have to do is enjoy what I’m doing.’ ”

Rose leaned forward in his chair, the corners of his mouth turned up in a wicked grin.

“What kind of coach am I? I’m an old-school kind of guy,” he said. “I don’t believe in a lot of the stuff we’ve done in this country over the past 10 years. The trend has been toward trying to work faster and work less. Everyone’s trying to save time and save energy in the name of efficiency, but what we’re doing is working faster and getting slower, and the times prove it.

“You’ve got to put in the miles. That’s the kind of coach I am, and now I’m a little bit of a rebel because I’m doing it. What you put in is what you get out.”

So things have come full circle for the Nadadores. They began their ascent to becoming the most successful U.S. club team in history when Mark Schubert, now at USC, installed the “animal lane” that turned distance swimmers Shirley Babashoff and Brian Goodell into stars of the ’76 Summer Olympics.

And Schubert’s Nadadores won 18 men’s and women’s national titles combined.

Rose’s approach may be a bit more low-key than Schubert’s, but the miles on his workout sheet add up similarly. His “distance lane” is voluntary. At first, only two swimmers were willing to slog on for another 45 minutes after the others had left the pool. Now, there are 16.

“Coach Rose is a distance coach and he’s really, really hard,” Capistrano Valley High backstroker Cathy Carone said. “But he totally motivates us, totally pushes us and really encourages us. I like him.”

It’s a pretty simple equation as Rose sees it. Nobody wants to swim 12 miles every day and nobody wants to swim against somebody who does.

“It’s a mental thing,” he says. “You’ve got to put in the physical background. You’ve got to teach the mind how to deal with stress. When you line up with seven other people and you look up and down and say, ‘Sorry, I’ve paid the price better than you have,’ well, if it gets down to a tight race, there’s no technique in the world that will beat that feeling. And that’s what we’re trying to impress on these kids.”

Rose’s second wife, Siga, in her second stint as the Nadadores’ age-group coach, is quick to point out that all work and no play can make Jack one burned-out swimmer.

“We pride ourselves in telling our swimmers that we train the hardest and we play the hardest, too,” she said. “There are no shortcuts. It all comes down to yardage. But you can make it fun. That’s why Coach Rose is here at 3:30 writing his practices.

“His real strength is his feel for people. He’s a great motivator, but he’s an even better listener. And when you’re dealing with young people, that’s so important.”

Bill Rose’s return to coaching--and his first impact on the Nadadores’ program--actually came seven years ago, when he was dating Siga, then in her fifth year of being in charge of the Mission Viejo age-groupers.

He came out after work to help coach, but wanted to stay in the background. So she introduced him as “Sam,” a former coach who was going to help out.

“I remember always calling him ‘Sam,’ ” said Lisa Jacob, a Stanford swimmer who has been with the Nadadores 12 years. “I don’t think I ever found out back then that he was Coach Rose.”

Schubert did . . . after about a year. Schubert concentrated his efforts on the senior team, which trained at the Marguerite International Swim Complex. The age-groupers worked out at local high schools.

Schubert showed up at the 1986 Junior Olympics to watch the Nadadores’ new wave compete and made the discovery.

“He looked at me and said, ‘Oh my God. You’re Sam, aren’t you?’ ” Rose said, still unable to contain a mischievous fit of laughter.

Siga says her husband missed coaching from the day she met him and his desire to return only grew with every day he was away.

“His heart was always at the pool,” she said, “and he always kept his foot in the door.”

Rose decided to lower his shoulder and break down the door when Terry Stoddard resigned and the Mission Viejo job became available. He knew the city had agreed to maintain the swim complex only until next June and then re-evaluate its commitment. He knew the Mission Viejo Company was no longer a sponsor and the club that once had the sport’s biggest checkbook would now be faced with begging for money like everyone else.

He didn’t care.

“The No. 1 factor was the tradition,” he said. “And No. 2 was the facilities. If you want to make it to the very top, you couldn’t pick a better place in the world to give you the avenue to do it. We don’t have the finances we once did, but I’m confident the city will decide to continue to maintain this great facility and we’ll always have the tradition that is still known all over the world.

“When Terry Stoddard took over for Mark Schubert, he was doomed from the beginning. And damned from the beginning. You don’t take over for John Wooden and have a shot. It wasn’t his fault that the level dropped. He didn’t have the support of the parents, all he had was their expectations.

“But I’m in an opposite situation. Now, they’re ready for change, they’re reaching out and asking, ‘How do we make it back to the top?’ And now we have to refocus and band together because we’re on our own.

“So I have a built-in honeymoon period.”

And for Rose--as long as his occupation requires sunglasses and a whistle--the honeymoon will never end.