A Chance to Make a Splash

Julie Swail is 27 years old. She graduated from UC San Diego in 1995 and since then has been a second-grade teacher, a swim coach, sent out as a temp office assistant more times than she can count. Swail, who is from Placentia, even worked for a wine distributor. She would re-stock stores with cases and boxes of wine every day. Heavy lifting, plenty of it, was involved. This was good news. It saved Swail from the weight room at night.

Robin Beauregard is 21. The Marina High grad plans to be an orthopedic surgeon, so medical school is in her future. Her distant future. She should be a senior at UCLA but Beauregard is still, kind of, a freshman. Beauregard takes classes when she can and sometimes she wonders what she is doing, will she feel old and gray when all of her classmates are two, three, four years younger. But mostly Beauregard is thrilled to be putting off school.

Swail and Beauregard are members of the U.S. women’s water polo team. The U.S. finally qualified for the 2000 Olympics two weeks ago at a tournament in Palermo, Italy. It was the last chance for the United States to qualify. The Olympics has spots for only six teams.

And what did the United States have riding on this?

“Only the salvation of our sport,” Swail says. Swail laughs because she can now and she is really not totally serious. Only a little bit.

This is the first time that women’s water polo will be an Olympic sport. For 100 years, men have played water polo at the Olympics. Now the women get a chance.

Swail and Beauregard paid attention when women’s soccer and softball made Olympic debuts in 1996 and when women’s hockey did the same in 1998.

“As I watched those other women,” Swail said Wednesday in Long Beach at a celebration lunch for the team, “I got tears in my eyes. It was so exciting to see women reach the same goals so many of us have. And as we saw what the Olympics did for those sports as far as increasing awareness of them, I think we all knew how important to our sport it would be to make it to the Olympics.”

The Olympic women softball, soccer and hockey players all touched the country. Winning gold medals helped. But more than the medals we fell in love with unaffected love of competition the women had. They were not hoping for big financial scores or a chance to go pro. All they wanted was to play the best in the world.

It is that way with this women’s water polo team.

“Girls have put off school, jobs, having a family, getting married,” Coach Guy Baker said. “We’ve had girls who laid tile just to support themselves,” said Swail, who is the team captain. “We’ve all given up something to do this and I think we’re all glad we have.”

Beauregard remembers going to the 1984 Los Angeles Games with her family. Right then and there, when she was only five years old, Beauregard decided she wanted to be in the Olympics some day. “I just always assumed it would be as a swimmer,” Beauregard says.

Not until two and a half years ago did the women learn water polo would be in the Olympics. Now they’d like to share the thrill of getting elbowed and kicked, gouged and spat on with the rest of the country. Really. This sport is fun.

“It can get pretty physical,” Swail said. “It can be pretty rough,” Beauregard said.

The sport is also exhausting and exhilarating. Both Swail (at Valencia) and Beauregard played on boys’ teams in high school. There were no girls’ teams. Swail says she knows that anywhere east of Utah, high school girls don’t even know water polo exists.

“By getting on TV--we hope we get on TV--we’re hoping people around the country will find out about our sport.”

The time is right for this exposure, Swail thinks. The 1996 Summer Games became the Women’s Games. It was a revelation to so many people how many good female athletes there are in the world.

Besides the U.S., Australia, Canada, Russia, Holland and Kazakhstan will participate in this first Olympics for women’s water polo. Because we are in California and see women playing water polo at high schools and colleges all around, don’t be fooled. The U.S. is not a medal favorite. The U.S. was not expected to make the six-team field.

Holland and Australia are the powerhouses. The Canadians beat the U.S. last summer at the Pan-Am Games and earned an Olympic berth before the United States. All across Europe there are club teams for women to play on and against.

In the United States, once the women get done with college there is nowhere to go. This national team has been together for nearly two years, training at Los Alamitos and getting some limited funding from the United States Olympic Committee. In this way the water polo team is much like the U.S. women’s hockey team. There is no outlet for the sport other than a geographically limited area of college competition.

After the Olympics, Swail will put all her energies into her newest job--head coach of the new women’s program at UC Irvine. Beauregard will become a full-time student and take full aim at medical school.

But not until they’ve helped introduce the country to women playing water polo. And they hope we all stand up and cheer. Again.

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