Columnist Ron Kantowski: Rebels rule the pool at MWC swim meet

Friday, March 4, 2005 | 10:30 a.m.

You can talk about all those extra laps they swam in their creaky old pool, the preseason training trip to Florida financed by magazine subscriptions and candy bar sales, or the desire to be like Mike -- in this case, Phelps, the great Olympian. Or even his sister Whitney, who once was one of them.

But the real reason behind the first conference swimming championship sweep in Rebels history was a morning commute their coach made nearly three decades ago upon relocating to Southern Nevada from his native Seattle, where it rains so much that a pool is optional equipment when swimming.

"I had an old Porsche and was driving down Sunset Road, which was a two-lane road then, on my way to work," Jim Reitz recalled. "I could see the sun coming up. And I said 'I think I'm staying.' "

On Saturday, following the Rebels' double dip in the men's and women's Mountain West swimming championships in Oklahoma City, the dean of the UNLV coaching staff received his sixth and seventh coach of the year trophies. One of these days, he'll probably get around to putting them up on the wall alongside the other five in his modest office in the Lied Athletic Complex.

He won't talk about those trophies unless you hold a starter's pistol to his head. The conference championship hardware is another matter.

Provided they will fit in the trophy case at Buchanan Natatorium, that's where those trophies are going. Front and center. Where anybody with a finishing kick can see them.

"The state (high school) meet is coming up," Reitz said. "They'll be a good recruiting tool."

So will the program's 3.22 collective grade-point average and the All-Americans and international Olympians it has spawned like tadpoles. While coaching swimming has never been about collecting trophies for Reitz -- we don't talk about winning championships; we talk about swimming fast," he said of a philosophy that has served him well -- you could tell he was happy to have these two.

The women's championship was his fourth, but first in 13 years. The men had never won.

Sometimes, when you get through slicing and dicing 9.9 men's scholarships and 14 women's into tiny tuition morsels and counting the bake sale money, there just isn't enough depth to knock off the bigger budget programs like those at BYU and Utah.

But Reitz, 54, isn't complaining. He never has, which might explain why he has lasted 25 years at UNLV working for seven different athletic directors. And he never will, which is why he'll probably wind up working for seven more before he goes off the deep end and retires.

Not that he has any beefs about his new boss. Reitz said the swimming budget was recently increased for the first time in 11 years and that athletic director Mike Hamrick also is committed to building a state-of-the-art swimming and diving facility within the next 4 or 5 years.

Maybe then they'll finally turn ancient Buchanan Natatorium into a cement pond.

Not only is Buchanan old, but it has more leaks than Capitol Hill. Legend has it Buster Crabbe and Esther Williams swam there. So there's no doubt a new pool would help Reitz attract even more Aquamen and women.

"It's all money-driven," he said about the difference between a great swimming program, like the one at Texas, and a good one, like his, and conceding that even though resources are at all-time high at UNLV, the twain probably never shall meet.

"It's like (basketball coach) Roy Williams said about why he went to North Carolina. It's access to talent. I think that's the part that's still hard for us. When we talk to a mother in Nebraska or Oklahoma, we still have trouble convincing them their daughter is not going to fall into sin. But if I can get them to visit, they almost always wind up apologizing."

That's something he never has to do himself. Although Reitz's budget is the most meager in the athletic department, he always comes in under it. And not only do his teams go to class, they play by the rules.

"I guess I'm just a purist who loves to coach swimming," Reitz said.

This team will probably wind up being one of his favorites, and not just because he expects it might set a school record for points scored at the upcoming men's and women's championship meets in Minneapolis and Indianapolis, respectively.

Even before the start of the season, when team members sold raffle tickets for $2 each, instead of the usual $5, at UNLV football games to raise $34,000 for training camp in Florida (obviously, this was early in the season before the Rebels starting losing and fans stopped coming to the games with raffle ticket money) he could tell they were going to be a group that would swim the extra mile. Sometimes even literally.

It was down in training camp at Plantation, Fla., where he challenged his walk-on distance swimmers with a series of "One Mores," Reitz's infamous extra laps at the end of practice, when swimmers' arms turn to spaghetti noodles.

"We never make the kids do anything they don't want to do," Reitz said about preferring to let his swimmers challenge themselves. "But there we were, staying at some dive hotel on the beach and in the middle of swimming 11,000 yards and they said 'C'mon coach, is that all you've got?' "

Those four walk-ons -- Erik Ringdahl, John Pittenger, Mathew Morton and Kyle Goodrich -- wound up scoring points at last week's MWC championship meet. So, too, did virtually everybody else who made the trip. Seventeen of the 18 UNLV men and all 20 women placed in the points at Oklahoma City.

Cliche aside, it was literally a total team effort that helped the Rebels make such a big splash.

Leaving the coach who never makes a ripple to soak it all in.