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Thursday, June 05, 2008

Chairman Honored Nationally

By Harold Smith
Mountain View Telegraph
      Paul Torno is a by-the-numbers kind of guy.
    It doesn't take long for the National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association of America rules chairman, power-point chairman, national team-ranking program director, and All-American archives coordinator to whip out his spreadsheets replete with rows of figures related to the country's high school teams.
    The statistical columns included class, gender, points and school with their standings — sort of a ranking system, but based on hard facts rather than a poll. Event times, pulled from participating coaches, are the basis for the reports, which factor in an altitude adjustment for good measure.
    The NISCA guru, who lives in Sandia Park, was recognized by the association as its 2008 Hall of Fame Award recipient during a banquet in Tacoma, Wash., on March 29. Only one association member each year receives the prestigious accolade.
    “The NISCA Hall of Fame Award is the highest award given by NISCA for leadership in interscholastic aquatics …,” an organization news release said. “A member receives this award only once, (and) the recipient's name is engraved on the Permanent NISCA trophy displayed at the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.”
    Torno's resume also includes stints on other NISCA committees, and he was inducted into the Washington Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2006. Indeed, Torno, who moved to New Mexico from Bainbridge Island, Wash., in 2002, has been around the block a few times.
    Torno, 67, was Washington state's coach of the year twice. He started the girls swimming program at Bainbridge High where he coached the Spartans from 1977-88 and won a state title in 1986.
    “I think I did a good job as a high school coach,” Torno said. “But you don't get this award from just coaching. It's about what you've done overall in support of the sport. I really do think high school swimming is a great sport.”
    Torno has maintained a rather low profile in the Land of Enchantment. But longtime Albuquerque Academy coach Dave Barney, who was the NISCA National Coach of the Year in 1995, knows him full well.
    “He's a nice guy, very knowledgeable,” Barney said. “He was a successful coach in Washington state, and he was an official and an announcer there. He was one of the first ones I met in the NISCA. We started off at about the same time, around 1982. And he's been a zone director in two different zones for the NISCA.”
    Torno moved here so his wife, Sharon, could be closer to her mother, who lives in Roswell. NISCA's 1999 outstanding service award recipient still travels to Washington on occasion to help with various meets there, including the state championships, but he acknowledged he has come to appreciate the sunshine here.
    For Torno, it all began in Missouri.
    “I grew up in St. Louis,” he said. “My high school and my club team — though club teams are different now — both trained at the Young Men's Hebrew Association there. I didn't start competing until I was 13. My senior year (at Soldan High School, where he graduated in 1958), I was on a state-champion relay team, the 200-yard medley relay. I was a butterflier. Then, I was like third or fourth in the 200 free.”
    Torno then made his way to Grinnell College in Iowa.
    “I placed in a league meet in college,” he said. “But I don't think I ever finished first.”
    He then served in the military, where he, as a lieutenant, managed the special-services facilities at the now-defunct Stead Air Force Base in Reno, Nev. He also coached the YMCA swimming team in Reno.
    Torno went back to Grinnell and then did his graduate studies at the University of Iowa, and he and his wife later went to teach at Highland Park, a Chicago suburb. But they made up their minds, in their 30s, if they ever wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest, they needed to do it without further delay.
    So, they packed up their bags in 1973 and moved despite not having secured jobs.
    “Most of my career, I was a high school counselor,” Torno said.
    But swimming was his passion.
    “For the first seven or eight years, swimming was a one-class sport in Washington (as it still is in New Mexico),” Torno said. “Then it went to two classes. Bainbridge was in the smaller of the classes, competed in the 3A meet, though Bainbridge was a 2A school.
    “When we changed to two classes, that's when we became competitive,” he continued. “But we were always competitive in a duals meet (due to the Spartans' overall depth). I always coached swimming as a team sport. That's what my philosophy was. The kids bought into it. After that first state trophy, we were always in the top four, always got a trophy every year after that.”
    Harold Smith can be reached by phone at 823-7104 or by e-mail at hsmith@mvtelegraph.com.>   

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