Schubert’s New Act : Coach Turns Down Intensity at USC but Still Succeeds

Mark Schubert was dead serious when he told his elite corps of swimmers that after enduring his workouts, military boot camp would be a piece of cake.

As coach of the Mission Viejo Nadadores from 1972-1985, Schubert’s style of coaching was intense, intimidating and tough. Swimmers late to practice would be locked out. A missed workout on New Year’s Eve brought double yardage on New Year’s Day. A missed morning workout brought a phone call at 4:45 a.m., with the intimidating voice on the other end wanting to know why.

Schubert demanded that his swimmers have a strong presence on the pool deck, swim in meets wearing the same blue and gold team uniforms, stretch in unison and warm up in double-layer suits--no exceptions.

Schubert had tremendous results, leading a seemingly invincible army of swimmers to 45 national titles in more than a decade.

Today, age and experience have mellowed him. As coach of the USC men’s and women’s teams, and the Trojan Swim Club, he is more lenient, allowing occasional tardiness, tailoring workouts to fit swimmers’ needs, being flexible when a class conflicts with a workout. Coaching college swimming, he has found, requires a more understanding approach, and keeping swimmers happy in the sport is essential for success. A college swimmer’s main priority is school, not swimming.

He is also finding that the more relaxed approach still brings results, such as landing the top woman recruit in the nation, Kristine Quance in 1993. Other successes include a second-place finish at last year’s nationals with the Trojan Swim Club, a private summer training program, with a team that formerly appeared nowhere near the top of the swimming charts, and his college women beating the top-ranked Stanford team in a dual meet for the first time since 1978.

“I am a much better coach now than I was when I was younger,” said Schubert, 47, who will serve as the assistant women’s coach for the 1996 Olympic Team. “I am now more understanding of people and human nature. There came a point when I was so intense that it wasn’t healthy for my swimmers or myself.”

That intensity struck fear into the hearts of his swimmers. Whether it was swimming against a powerful current for minutes at a time, or sprinting yards of butterfly with 25 push-ups at the end of each lap as the coaches timed and screamed, or enduring three hours of nonstop long distance swimming, each workout was designed to wipe out his swimmers, physically and emotionally.

But Schubert has dropped those regimented workouts. He says he has learned to be attentive to his swimmers, to have more patience while demanding excellence.

As a young coach in 1969, recently graduated from the University of Kentucky, Schubert returned to his hometown in Ohio. Soon, he found his ambition too big for a small town and took the advice of his own coach, who said to him, “Mark, you are going to be a great coach someday but it’s not going to be in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.”

He found a place big enough for his dreams in Southern California.

“I wanted to go where there was a big-time attitude,” Schubert recalled. “It was obvious that the majority of good talent was here and the facilities were better.”

He got his big-time opportunity in 1972, when he was asked to head a recreation-center swim program in a little-known Orange County community named Mission Viejo.

He started with 60 swimmers but within three years had 250. In 1976, six of his swimmers made the Olympic team, with two, Brian Goodell and Shirley Babashoff, winning gold medals.

Not only did his success bring in the potentially best swimmers in the nation, Schubert’s program brought fame to Mission Viejo and caught the interest of Philip Morris executives, whose company owned the Mission Viejo Co., a real estate development group.

The Olympics paved the way for Schubert to begin a world-class program with strong financial backing.

“[The company] recognized that the program could be used as a magnet to get families to move to the area and sell houses,” Schubert said.

At Mission Viejo, Schubert pioneered the philosophy of endurance training. He also demanded nearly 100% workout attendance six days a week, six hours a day. Besides swimming, workouts included running, weightlifting and body-composition testing. Even his greatest swimmers at times felt they had passed the breaking point.

“Sometimes I would imagine myself getting out of the pool and arguing with him and then throwing him in the pool,” said Goodell, who swam for Schubert from 1972-82. “In those days it was his way or no way--kind of a military type of attitude. But there has not been a single challenge in my life [since] that I see as difficult when compared to the training we used to do.”

But Schubert’s intensity also took a toll on some talented swimmers who burned out before they had reached their mid-teens.

Schubert also became aware of the dangers of eating disorders associated with body-composition testing, particularly with girls.

“He was a great motivator and conditioner, but he was very weight conscious with the girls and that was hard on us,” said Stephanie Rosenthal, who was ranked third in the nation when she was 14 and quit a year later because of the pressure. “A lot of girls, including myself, had eating disorders. I don’t hold any resentment but I just wish he knew then what he knows now. But, you know, if I were to go back to swimming I would swim with Mark because I believe in him.”

After a decade with the Nadadores, however, Schubert decided he needed a new challenge. In 1985, he, his wife Joke, and two daughters left for Boca Raton, Fla., where he established and headed the Mission Bay Makos swim club. He won nine national titles there but stayed only four years, saying that the pressures of co-owning, managing and fund-raising for the team kept him from his passion, coaching.

He began to realize he would have to change his coaching approach when he signed on to coach the University of Texas women’s team.

“I had to learn how to coach college-age athletes and sprinters, and that did not really come naturally to me,” Schubert said. “I just learned to coach people as adults.”

Although he says he enjoyed coaching at Texas, where he led the team to two NCAA titles, he was longing to get back to Southern California. So when legendary USC men’s coach Peter Daland retired in 1992, Schubert applied, got the job and within a year had established control of both the men’s and women’s programs.

USC is one of the few college swimming programs that combines men’s and women’s groups in training.

“It is a much more natural situation in swimming,” Schubert said. “There is a good social aspect to it and it adds some real benefits in training. Janet Evans trains with the men’s team and the guys will not let themselves be beat by her.”

Assistant coach Sippy Woodhead, who was coached by Schubert in 1980 and who had broken seven world and 18 American records before she turned 16, says Schubert’s leadership has made USC a force in collegiate swimming.

“I feel that we’ve finally arrived,” she said. “I definitely think that is due to Mark. He knows how to build championship teams.”

His transition from the intense perfectionist at Mission Viejo to the more approachable and flexible coach has helped his swimmers, said assistant Larry Leibowitz, who has coached alongside Schubert for 11 years.

“He listens to the swimmers a lot more,” Leibowitz said. “A long time ago, he was more autocratic. There is a real huge soft side to Mark but you had to be real close to him to get to know it. We still coach real hard today, but it’s that little bit of softness that really makes a difference.”

Schubert concedes that his intensity has sometimes driven a wedge between him and his swimmers.

“I don’t know why my style can be somewhat intimidating and I don’t really look at that as an advantage,” Schubert said. “Communication can be challenging if you are perceived as intimidating.”

But his swimmers see that he is trying to improve his accessibility.

“His attitude from Texas to here has changed,” said Meaghan Williams, women’s co-captain who transferred from Texas last year. “He is still tough but a little more open-minded. I can always talk to Mark about anything. I was real intimidated by him when I first met him. He just has this aura about him. . . . But most of the freshmen now talk to him a lot. I think they see how the upperclassmen interact with him. They see that he is not here to intimidate, he is here to help.”

Still, there is work to be done. The Women’s Pac-10 Conference meet is coming up later this month and Olympic trials are less than a month away, followed by the NCAA meet in mid-March. Schubert hopes to have some of his swimmers, such as Evans, Quance, Mike Merrell and Brad Bridgewater, on the Olympic team.

Emotions were high on the pool deck during a recent afternoon workout, since hard training sometimes results in injuries that can put a swimmer’s Olympic dreams at risk. The new Mark Schubert has become as much father-mentor-guide as coach for his swimmers.

He talked gently with one of his swimmers, who had been given a shot of cortisone to relieve the tendinitis in her shoulder. Jean Todisco, who finished third in the 200-meter butterfly at nationals, was on the verge of tears because of pain and fear that her condition had worsened.

“This is a little short-term pain for long-term gain,” Schubert assured her, smiling as he spoke and softly patting her on the head. “Go home and sleep. Things always seem worse when you don’t get some sleep.”