NBAC Keeps Drawing Elite Pool of Athletes

BALTIMORE -- One preteen swimmer moved here with her father, leaving her mother, brother and sister behind in New Jersey. A young teenager uprooted her entire family, bringing everyone from Michigan. Another arrived from Connecticut with her mother and siblings while her dad stayed behind to work. Still another left both parents at home, settling in the area with his grandparents.

They, a handful of locals, and a few swimmers who commute several hours daily from Pennsylvania or Washington, all hope to reach the Olympic Games by way of the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, the home club of Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff and, more recently, a coveted hub for young stars who believe they can best launch their careers by leaving their home pools.

The NBAC is "famous for taking people who are good and making them great," said Greg Pelton, 18, who arrived along with his sister Elizabeth, 15, from Fairfield, Conn., in the summer of 2006 and plans to swim at Harvard next year. "I wanted to see how far I could go."

Teen athletes who uproot or split up their families in search of better training have long been a phenomenon in figure skating and gymnastics. But until a host of transplants began descending on the NBAC in the five years since Phelps won the first six of his 14 Olympic gold medals, there was little indication that such a trend would emerge in swimming, a sport in which the most talented youngsters typically have waited until they reach the collegiate level to leave their neighborhood swim clubs.

With Phelps and Hoff making their Olympic debuts at age 15 -- Phelps in the 2000 Summer Games and Hoff in 2004 -- highly professional youth training in swimming seems to have acquired a greater sense of legitimacy and even urgency. The athletes lured to the NBAC said they came in part because of Phelps's or Hoff's success; the club's long Olympic history (the NBAC has produced six Olympic swimmers dating from Theresa Andrews, who won two gold medals at the '84 Summer Games); the reputation of Hoff's former coach, Paul Yetter, as a master at molding young athletes; and the chance to train daily with other young stars in a serious environment.

"Each year, we seem to get one or two athletes who are very good athletes who want to get to the top level," said Yetter, who has accepted an assistant coaching position at Auburn and will depart in mid-July. "Sometimes, they are already there."

Whether NBAC's youngsters will blossom into Olympic medal winners in 2012 is unclear, but no other club in the country can match the sort of top-end young talent it houses. As of early June, six NBAC swimmers -- Drew Cosgarea, 16; Collin Turner, 11; Camryne Morris, 14; Willa Wang, 14; Elizabeth Pelton, 15; and Felicia Lee, who turned 17 in May -- were ranked No. 1 in the nation in their age groups in at least one event, according to USA Swimming rankings. Each of the top three swimmers in the age-14 girls' 800 and 1,500 freestyle (Morris, Wang and Lauren Hine) trains at NBAC.

Of those six standouts, only Cosgarea and Turner are not transplants from other pools.

"With 'the imports,' we're really making a . . . national name for ourselves," said Austin Surhoff, son of former Orioles outfielder B.J. Surhoff, and one of the local products on Yetter's team who will swim at the University of Texas next year. "We're bringing in people from all over the East Coast instead of just local kids. That's the major change."

The Washington region's Curl-Burke Swim Club has been known to attract the occasional star from outside the United States, and it and Rockville-Montgomery Swim Club are respected nationwide for their annual dominance of USA Swimming competitions that measure the breadth and depth of a club's success. They, however, lack the bevy of young U.S. stars who populate NBAC, which is several times smaller.

"North Baltimore is a success story," Curl-Burke founder Rick Curl said earlier this year. "They have, compared to us, very small numbers, but very high quality."

Said Mark Eldredge, a Rockville-Montgomery Swim Club coach, "They are obviously the most successful club program in the country in developing Olympic-caliber athletes."