UCLA’s Ballatore Hired as Brown’s Swim Coach

Ron Ballatore, 16-year veteran men’s swimming coach at UCLA, was named coach at Brown on Tuesday, leaving the Bruin program to carry on its fight for survival without him.

UCLA announced last August that it was dropping men’s swimming and men’s and women’s gymnastics after the 1993-94 academic year, but reinstated women’s gymnastics two weeks later when threatened with a gender-equity lawsuit.

On Monday, members of the men’s swimming and gymnastics teams were awarded a temporary restraining order, barring the school from cutting the programs. But the order also required lawyers representing the parties to return to Superior Court in Los Angeles on May 16 for further argument. The teams are forbidden from scheduling and recruiting in the interim.

Ballatore, whose contract expires in July, decided not to wait for the courts’ decision.

“(UCLA athletic administrators) have given me every indication that they do not want to have this men’s swimming team here,” Ballatore said. “So, I am going to go to greener pastures, and maybe I’ll take some of my swimmers with me.”

Under Ballatore, UCLA won the 1982 national title, never finished lower than 10th at the NCAA meet and has won 26 individual NCAA titles. Brown has never won an NCAA individual or team title in men’s swimming.