Quance Feeling Buoyant Again

Kristine Quance looks up from a plate of blueberry pancakes, her favorite breakfast food, and can plainly see through clear blue eyes that the past 12 months have been a remarkable period in her 22-year-old life.

“This year has been so amazing,” she says during a mid-morning meal at a restaurant near USC. “It started out down, and ever since then I’ve been on this high--riding a wave.”

Quance, one of America’s top swimmers, hopes to ride the crest all the way to the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia, for one last stab at Olympic glory.

She fell short of her goals last summer at the Atlanta Games and, despite winning a gold medal in a relay, returned home to Northridge feeling like a failure. Depressed and despondent, she considered retiring from swimming and dropping out of USC before her senior season.

Then she came to her senses.

While addressing a youth church group, Quance came to the realization that her life amounted to more than the trials and tribulations she experienced in the pool. Life, as it turned out, was pretty wonderful after all.

“It helped put things in perspective,” she said. “That’s when I kind of kicked myself in the butt: ‘You can’t throw away this last year.’ ”

Quance rededicated herself to swimming and gained a renewed interest in school by changing her major from exercise science to communications in the fall. Since then, the Granada Hills High graduate has adopted a new outlook and experienced a series of personal triumphs.

Consider:

--She won two events to help lead the USC women’s swimming team to its first NCAA championship in March, ending Stanford’s five-year hold on the title.

--She signed a two-year endorsement deal with Nike.

--She was among 11 finalists for the Honda-Broderick Cup, presented annually to the nation’s top female college athlete.

--She established meet records in the 400-meter individual medley, her best event, and the 200 IM at the Janet Evans Invitational earlier this month at USC.

--She received a $5,000 post-graduate award from the NCAA.

Buoyed by her recent success, Quance plans to swim in seven individual events--a career high for a single meet--at the Phillips 66 U.S. national championships Saturday through Aug. 1 in Nashville, Tenn.

Selections for the 1998 World Championships in Perth, Australia, will be based on performances in the finals.

“The 400 IM is the first day, which is nice,” Quance said. “After that, everything is kind of a bonus.”

Saturday will mark the first time Quance will compete in the 400 IM in a long-course or 50-meter pool since her controversial disqualification at the U.S. Olympic trials in May of last year. A judge ruled Quance made an illegal turn between the backstroke and breaststroke, a minor infraction that is rarely called at the world-class level.

Quance, who decided against suing U.S. Swimming over her disqualification, qualified for the Atlanta Games in the 100 breaststroke and 200 IM but failed to reach the finals in either event. Her disastrous performance in the 200 IM, in which she was seeded second, prompted her to tearfully ask if she could be replaced for the breaststroke leg in the 400 medley relay preliminaries.

“I didn’t want to jeopardize the team’s chances of making the finals,” Quance said. “I was afraid.”

As it turned out, it was too late for a replacement and Quance helped the relay team qualify. She later received a gold medal, but because she did not swim in the final it has become a tainted award in her eyes.

Quance has never put the gold medal around her neck and doubts she ever will.

“It wasn’t the same as standing up on the awards stand and having the national anthem played for you and having the medal placed around your neck,” she said. “That’s the whole moment of glory. That’s what I wanted more than the medal. . . . That’s what I still want.”

After returning from Atlanta, a downcast Quance was ready to chuck it all--everything she worked so hard to achieve since she first burst onto the national swimming scene as a Valley teenager.

“I remember being in Atlanta and being so disappointed and embarrassed,” she said. “I felt bad that I let everyone down. My family and friends and all these people came to watch me swim and I did awful.

“But I got back here and everybody treated me the same. I was still the same Kristine Quance when I came back as when I left. My friends and family still treated me the same. My sisters still treated me as nothing more than their sister. I just kind of realized that I was lucky to have the things that I have.

“I went to the Olympics. That’s not something many people can say. I think that it took me a while to realize that was something special in itself.”

Even more special to Quance was helping USC upset Stanford for the NCAA championship in the same Indianapolis pool--reconfigured for 25 meters--where she had been disqualified at the Olympic trials.

She won the 200 breaststroke and 400 IM, giving her eight individual titles in four years, and the Trojans came from behind to defeat Stanford by 12 points.

“I could take everything I’ve done, and it doesn’t even compare,” Quance said of sharing the NCAA title with her teammates. “It was an amazing feeling. We had so much fun because no one expected us to do anything.

“I remember seeing this look of terror on the faces of Stanford’s swimmers when we started to catch them.”

With her college career over, Quance will continue to train at USC under Trojan Coach Mark Schubert and work toward a degree in communications. Her endorsement deal with Nike will help pay the bills, allowing her to work out without having to actually work.

But she will no longer live near school. Quance and her roommate, former USC swimmer Hope Gittings, moved this week from an apartment near campus to one in West L.A.

“A change of scenery is always good,” Quance said.

She takes the same attitude toward her goal of qualifying for the 1998 World Championships in Perth. The fact that she has never been to Australia serves as a motivating factor.

If she qualifies, Quance will have even more reason for working toward a return trip down under in 2000.

“I’d like to see all of Australia,” she said.