This Smiling Snapshot Will Last a Lifetime for Stitts

It was half an hour before her race and Staciana Stitts sat on a bench with rap music pounding through her headphones and into her head, her arms, her legs, straight through to her heart. Stitts was looking for attitude, she wanted to feel fierce and strong and forceful and then she wanted to dive in the pool and make the U.S. Olympic team.

But first, just after Stitts stopped the music, the 18-year-old Cal sophomore who swims for the Irvine Novaquatics, took a small camera out of her equipment bag, held it at arm’s length from her face, smiled and snapped.

This snapshot will be precious.

Stitts beat former world champion Kristy Kowal by the length of one of her navy blue-painted fingernails, by 1/100th of a second, for second place in Friday’s 100-meter breaststroke final at the U.S. Olympic trials at the Indiana University Natatorium.

“I didn’t believe it had happened,” Stitts said afterward. “It still feels a little eerie. Everyone who has helped me all my life, my coaches and parents and teammates, everyone around me, they’re all Olympians.”

The winner of the race was 16-year-old Megan Quann, the American record holder who boldly is predicting a world record soon. Quann finished in 1 minute 7.66 seconds. Stitts followed in 1:07.79 and then Kowal, 21, touched the wall in 1:07.80.

Before the race, the announcer had told the sold-out natatorium that this race featured the swimmers who have the four fastest times in American history--and that this was the fastest field ever assembled for the distance.

So when Stitts looked at the giant scoreboard and saw the No. 2 next to her name, saw that she had done it, had made the Olympic team, Stitts ducked her head under the water then popped up, a shiny-headed jack-in-the-box, and grabbed Quann in a big Olympic hug.

An hour after the race, the joy for Stitts was still indescribable. She hadn’t seen her mom yet but Stitts and her father, Dane, had joined in a teary embrace.

Dane and Judy, her mother, are both high school teachers at Carlsbad High. Dane teaches English, Judy teaches chemistry. Both had to sit and watch as their little girl struggled to accept her baldness, had to listen as Stitts would cry when some kids would make fun or adults would stare.

Since she was 12 years old, on Christmas Eve it was, Stitts has suffered from a condition called alopecia totalis. It is a condition that causes a person to lose all her hair, even her eyebrows. There is no cure. Stitts says doctors think it has something to do with an immune system problem. Maybe it is stress-related too.

Imagine being a 12-year-old girl and going bald. Imagine the stares and whispers, the taunts, the giggles you’d hear from behind.

Swimming was the salvation, though. Right from the beginning, Stitts couldn’t hide her baldness at the pool. You can’t push a wig up under a bathing cap. So Stitts’ swimming friends knew that Staciana had no hair.

No big deal. It turned out that Stitts was kind of cool in the pool. People ask her now, “When did you shave your head?”

Stitts has a gorgeous smile. She wears blue eye shadow even when she swims. She has two earrings in one ear, three in the other.

For a while Stitts tried wearing hats and scarves, turbans and wigs. Once her hair started to grow back, right before she was going to start eighth grade. Then she started eighth grade and her hair fell out again. “I was a brunet,” Stitts says. “You can’t tell now.”

Finally Stitts gave up the disguises. She was a swimmer, she was becoming a great one, and in the water Stitts could not wear a scarf or hat or turban or wig.

Three years ago Stitts came to the Novaquatics. It took her one three-hour session with Coach Dave Salo to find her kindred spirit. She wanted to do the long-distance training that Salo recommends. Until this summer Stitts would make the 60-mile drive, back and forth, every day from Carlsbad to Irvine. This summer she has bunked with a Novaquatics teammate in Newport Beach.

Salo had said for two days that Stitts had been nervous. She was jumping around, dancing with teammates before her race. “I just have to keep her calmed down,” Salo had said on Thursday, after the semifinals. “She can make this team.”

Stitts’ best friend on the Novaquatics is Irvine’s Amanda Beard, who had won a silver medal in the 100 breaststroke at the 1996 Olympics as a 14-year-old. Beard finished eighth Friday night and didn’t want to talk after the race.

But Stitts wanted to talk about Amanda. “She has been such an inspiration to me, she is the greatest friend in the world and we’ve gone some hard miles together,” Stitts said. “So I feel for her now, I know this is hard. She’s still got the 200, though.”

And that photo Stitts took of herself just before she was going to take off her sweats and get ready to march to the starting blocks?

“I was trying to really psych myself up for the race,” Stitts said. “I was listening to the rap music and trying to get an attitude. And then I wanted a picture of myself with this attitude. I wanted to remember how I felt.”

What a triumph this photo is. She is strong and proud. She is going to swim in the Olympics. And she is happy to snap a picture of herself. A photo of the person she is. A photo of the bald girl with the smile and the attitude.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com