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NBAC is an aquatic complex that keeps expanding into what Murray calls, "swimming nirvana."

03/17/10

There is a record in swimming that will never be broken. And that's written without hyperbole or fear of ever being proven wrong. It's not a time; we all know those numbers are bound for obsolescence. Thirty years from now, Michael Phelps will remain a swimming immortal and his epic eight in Beijing will have lost none of its luster. However, those world records he posted, the ones that seem so out of orbit? With or without any absurd new suit technology, all those times won't seem very special a few decades from now. Just ask Mark Spitz. His seven gold in Munich remain an all-time Olympic achievement, yet look at the times he won with... They might sneak him into consols at U.S. Nationals.

No, this record is not one of individual performance, but a streak compiled over four Olympiads... Here it is: Four straight Olympics, four 15-year-old Olympians, from the SAME CLUB TEAM. This is swimming's version of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. Or, closer to their Baltimore home, the aqua equivalent of Cal Ripken's ironman streak of 2,632 games played. Those four 15-year-olds were Anita Nall in 1992, Beth Botsford in 1996, Michael Phelps in 2000, and Katie Hoff in 2004. Their team: the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. The man who founded it, who's bound for induction at the International Swimming Hall of Fame this spring: Murray Stephens.

Think of it, placing a 15-year-old on an Olympic team is a freak occurrence, a child prodigy thing. Something that should come around once in a generation, leaving other parents whispering jealously on deck, leaving that child's parents shaking their heads, wondering where it came from. Doing it twice, back-to-back, on the same team, is simply spooky. Three times, and there's some dark magic afoot. Four times, turning the freak occurrence into tradition? Let's just say you have a better chance of giving birth to quadruplets -- on the same day you win the Powerball lottery for $100 million. As you're struck by lightning...

Yet, for the architect of this outlandish achievement, the guy who has made aquatic excellence a habit down in Baltimore for the last 43 years, it's not even particularly surprising. Perhaps that's Murray's greatest gift -- his droll view of extreme swimming success as inevitable. No more than the product of putting in the work and stepping up when it matters most. Psychologists have a name for this sort of thinking: Delusions of Grandeur. I have another name for it: Opium Dreams. When the mind takes off on deluded flights of fancy, the imagination stretched to the stratosphere, convincing yourself that anything at all is not only possible but destined...

That's Murray's world. Except it's not opium induced. It's as pragmatic and sober and convincing as it comes. Impressionable and talented young minds believe it, they buy in and great things keep happening down at the Meabowbrook complex he built just north of downtown Baltimore.

The first two teens on that list were Murray's own, Anita Nall and Beth Botsford, arriving at the Games from the pool deck he ran everyday. The third, of course, was Phelps, led down his famous road by Bob Bowman - a proud Murray disciple. And the fourth, Katie Hoff, was coached by Paul Yetter, not only a fellow Murray disciple but one of his former swimmers.

Which brings me to the point of full disclosure: I was swam from Murray too; I was a member of NBAC from 1984 to 1992. Paul Yetter and I had lockers next to each other at Loyola High School, where NBAC used to train during the school year. Anita Nall and I 'went out' as oh-so-innocent middle schoolers. I remember Michael Phelps at age four, a Tasmanian devil swirling around the pool deck bothering his sisters.

Clearly the bias is overwhelming. Yet I did not leave NBAC on good terms with Murray in 1992. (Many didn't; iconoclasts aren't always easy to work with...) It took many years perspective to appreciate the strange magic that's been brewing in Baltimore all these years. It's no longer a homegrown operation with talent sprouting up from families who lived in Maryland because of the dad's job - not because the dad found a new job and uprooted the family to be closer to the magic potion of Meadowbrook. It's become a destination for opium dreamers everywhere.

NBAC today is a brand, with a CEO / head coach, an accessible icon returned home, far flung business interests, and an aquatic complex that keeps expanding into, what Murray calls, "swimming nirvana." Murray's earned every bit of it -- along with his long overdue Hall of Fame induction. But before the brand, there was just a six-lane dungeon pool with thick chemical air and a ceiling likely lined with asbestos. And a cranky mustached coach wearing an Olympic ring figuring out how to make crazed opium dreams come true.