I just read three books in a row. One involved a boy wizard with a scar on his forehead. The other two were about men taking a new approach to their sports using ideas that were not new, but which had languished because they challenged the conventional wisdom. In both cases, their teams showed significant success due to the contributions of athletes who were not obviously gifted.

Moneyball, the bestseller by Michael Lewis, concerns the application of the Bill James' sabermetrics to the big-money team sport of baseball. Briefly, "working with either the lowest or next to lowest payroll in the game, the Oakland A's had won more regular season games than any other team, except the Atlanta Braves. They'd been to the playoffs three years in a row and in the previous two had taken the richest team in baseball, the Yankees, to within a few outs of elimination."

The Yanks out-spend the A's three-to-one; they can afford to pay top dollar to get the best free agents available. The A's use James's ideas to find less expensive and overlooked players that have succeeded in ways that many scouts overlook. Unfortunately, the featured players from the 2002 draft (where A's GM Billy Beane, a failed "can't miss" prospect himself, completely embraces James' ideas) have yet to mature and are not yet in a position to really *prove* the premise. It is possible that the A's have chosen a course that will always bring them a sound team but will never provide the players for a great team. I don't know squat about baseball, but given that they cannot match the Yankees payroll, the A's are definitely doing something right.

Long Strokes in a Short Season, by Art Aungst, concerns the application of ideas, originally inspired by Bill Boomer, about technique and streamlining to the no-money sport of girls' swimming at a public high school.

For twelve weeks each winter, Coach Aungst coaches a mix of gifted swimmers, less-gifted swimmers and athletes who are simply swimming during the offseason between their primary sports. There is no recruiting, so he doesn't face teams with enormously greater or lesser talent, but he does face teams whose coaches still adhere to 'more is better' training philosophies (How do we do it? Volume!).

Already one of the better teams in the league, Aungst's team improved markedly in the six seasons following his addition of Total Immersion-inspired training to his regimen. His greatest competition seems to come from two teams in his region whose coaches have followed his lead in using TI-style technique with their teams.

Orchard Park has great depth because even their seasonal swimmers, who might be kayakers or lacrosse players for the rest of the year, do learn to swim fast. Orchard Park does particularly well in the relays at the NY State Championships, finishing first or second at all eighteen relays over those six years with significant contributions from those seasonal athletes.

Like others at TI these days, Aungst is clearly fascinated with Eastern philosophy. There are quotes from the 'I Ching', 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and a description of Japanese rock gardening from the novel 'Shibumi'. But he doesn't wallow in profundity; he can also be very funny, whether at his own expense or quoting Homer Simpson.

Coach Aungst was kind enough to answer a few of my questions:

Q - How does your Win-Loss record compare before and after 1997?

A – “I don't mention this much, but in the last five years we lost one meet, and that was by a combined total of .14 seconds in three races. We have always been very successful and have only lost five divisional meets in the last 20 years, but ... I think the only valid comparison of program is us to us."

Q - What else might explain the better results since 1997? A particularly gifted swimmer?

Better funding, better facilities, sunspots, or anything else that you changed? A decline at other schools?

A - "I really have examined this from every angle I can, and objectively there is no other explanation other than the new path we took. I have always had great kids who worked hard, were easy to discipline and who came in knowing how to swim, which makes my job a piece of cake. ... A prime example is that our medley relay had the same four girls in it and won the states in '98 and '99. All four graduated and we won again in '00 and '01, and finished second in ‘02 only because our backstroker slipped off the blocks at the start. As far as the athletes go, they are by far the best I have ever coached, but I attribute that to technique-based programs."

"I used to coach age group club swimming all year round, and I had lots of kids who identified themselves as swimmers, and that was their main focus in life. I think I squandered many opportunities with these kids in my earlier days. Now, (our) athletes see something that challenges their athletic ability, and not just their ability to endure."

"I wrote the book mostly anecdotally because to me it is much more about mindset, and how the nuts and bolts come together are going to differ from one program to another based on all the variables you mention. To me – and I think for the kids as well – it has been a much more rewarding process,. I only included times in the book to give readers some frame of reference to see that this approach also produces some very fast swims as I personally had a great reluctance to move to a technique based program. It was a hard leap for an old-school, grind-it-out guy like me."

"The main thing I would like coaches to carry away is that while the technique-based approach does make really good athletes very fast, it also makes terrible swimmers become so much better even if they will never be fast and it makes kids so much more involved in the process while giving so many more positive accomplishments than just times or championships."

To read the Swimming World review: www.totalimmersion.net/long-strokes-review.html

Donal Fagan studied architecture at Carnegie Mellon University and practices his craft in Altoona PA. Besides his obvious passion for swimming and writing about swimming, he has great enthusiasm for community theatre (both acting and set design - his photo shows him standing in the set he designed for a production of The Diary of Anne Frank in 1999) and cycling. You can view Donal's webpage at www.donalfagan.com.

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