STROKES OF INSPIRATION

Rosanna Ramirez was eager to join the swim team at Fremont High last year.

There was only one problem.

“When I first got in the water, I could barely float,” she said.

Ramirez’s situation wasn’t exceptional. Unlike suburban Valley and Westside schools, which glean many of their team members from elite club programs, schools in East Los Angeles and South Central L.A. are more developmental rather than competitive.

“A lot of the kids in the swimming class don’t know how to swim,” said Fremont Coach Jenna Wiggenhorn, in her first season with the Pathfinders. “Some of these kids, if you took their hands off of the wall when they were first starting, well, they could have drowned.”

Erica Rodriguez, a 15-year-old sophomore at Fremont, says, “When I first got here, I had to hang on the wall all the time. Now I have so much fun in the pool. I love it.”

When the City Section swimming championships are staged next Wednesday at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach, defending champion Granada Hills and other suburban schools are expected to once again dominate, leaving the urban schools in their wake.

That’s OK with Wiggenhorn, 25, who grew up in swim-mecca Mission Viejo and competed at Saddleback College. Winning is not her primary concern. Her focus is on teaching students to swim and providing them with opportunities to compete and learn about team unity and improvement through hard work.

“We never win because we have such a small team,” said Wiggenhorn, who has 12 team members this year. “But that doesn’t stop my kids from trying.

“The main thing for them is that they want to be part of a team, to feel like they’re part of something.”

Many urban students never get the chance. Seventeen of the City Section’s 50 schools do not field swimming teams because of lack of interest, facilities, funding or coaching.

Competition for slots on urban swim teams such as Fremont, Garfield and Manual Arts is hardly overwhelming--”I don’t reject anybody,” Wiggenhorn said--but poor grades prevent some students from joining. Coaches, however, say that students who do take part often show a dramatic improvement in their grades and their motivation to do better in class.

“When I got into swimming, I got into my grades too,” said Ramirez, a sophomore who competes in freestyle events. “You have to get good grades to stay on the team, so I started to study more. The people on the team are really supportive. I love it.”

For others, the swim team offers a chance to learn a new skill.

“They come up to me and say, ‘I’d love to swim,’ so my first question is, ‘Can you swim?’ ” said Garfield Coach Scott Deninger, whose boys’ team finished 10th at last year’s City Section finals. “If they say, no, they can’t, we take them and work with them.”

And some become very successful in the pool. Garfield senior Cesar Romero, a two-time City Section champion in freshman-sophomore backstroke, finished third last year on the varsity.

Manual Arts swimmers also have been through a learning experience.

The school dropped its swimming program in 1984 because of funding problems but revived it three years ago. The Toilers, who do not have a pool on campus, practice at Los Angeles Southwest College.

Manual Arts Coach Jan Smith says the program has done wonders for students’ confidence--especially those who have little or no experience in the pool.

“They [inner-city kids] are at a huge disadvantage because we have no campus pool and no community facilities like some of the Valley and Westside schools.

“I just tell them it doesn’t matter if we win--just that they get the skills.”