Lou Walker is sitting in his cavernous Webster Pool office chirping away on his phone. On the desk of the Syracuse swimming head coach sits his inaugural Big East Championship Cup trophy from 1980. The wall is draped with 23 framed certificates – commemorating some of the 18 different All-Americans he has coached in the last quarter century. Walker’s wife Ellie – also his assistant coach – shuffles in and out of the room preparing for the day’s practice. These two have created a swimming program that has three Big East Championships to their family name. It’s a swimming family that resides in Syracuse, but originates from all over the globe.

Walker was a swimmer at SU from 1971-1975, a sprinter, who once held several school records. Walker said that almost all the members from his team 30 years ago were from the northeast.

Today, things are very different. This year’s swimmers and divers represent 15 states and five countries ranging from Canada to Poland to Puerto Rico.

‘The diversity of where these kids come from is a lot of fun,’ Walker said. ‘Bringing them in here together to see how they learn from one another is an educational process.’

There are more athletes on this year’s roster from outside the country (7) than there are from New York (6). So the operative question is, how and why are things so different from 30 years ago?

‘In my student days, pretty much everyone was from the northeast,’ Walker said. ‘But looking at how it is now, we are not that different from SU as a whole. This university recruits from all over the world and we have done the same. It has been a strong theme with Chancellor (Kenneth) Shaw and these are really unique kids.’

Walker and his coaching staff recruit via phone calls, videos and letters, but he says one technological innovation has led to the boom in the past 30 years.

‘E-mail,’ Walker says, opening up his account from his computer. ‘E-mail has been a major factor in this process. You can communicate so much quicker now. The process gets going, and it is a very easy way to start recruiting kids.’

The international boom at Syracuse certainly wasn’t intended, but it isn’t by chance that it continues today. Walker and the swimming family struck gold with one of their first international recruits – Miro Vucetic.

The 1997 graduate is SU’s most decorated swimmer. Vucetic was an All-American in each of his four years as an Orangeman and a 12-time Big East champion. Vucetic, who was the building block upon which Walker and his assistants now use to recruit throughout Europe, holds or shares eight Webster Pool records.

Following Miro Vucetic’s footsteps was his younger brother Josko. He has five records to his credit, was a seven-time Big East champion in the butterfly and freestyle events, and was an All-American.

Many members of the current SU swimming family are from Europe – most notably 2000 graduate and current SU assistant Djordje Filipovic. The Yugoslavia native was an NCAA champion his junior and senior years and competed in the 2000 Olympics. Filipovic is one of four Olympians that Walker has coached during his tenure.

The newest international face is freshman Luk Boral from Poznan, Poland. Already, in less than a full season he’s broken pool and school records.

‘They found me, through e-mail,’ Boral said. ‘I had good contact with schools in California and Arizona, but I wanted to come here. The IST program is the best in the country and I felt this was a place where I could improve my skills.’

Boral will attempt to represent his country in Athens, Greece this summer during the Olympics. He could be Walker’s fifth Olympian.

‘These are very motivated, focused, self-directed kids,’ Walker said. ‘They all work very hard.’

Gustavo Kertzcher is another of Walker’s unique finds. The junior grew up in Sweden. He speaks English, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese and German. Kertzchner, similar to Boral, had specific reasons for coming to SU.

‘When I started to look at school in the states,’ Kertzchner said, ‘I wanted a place with a history of good swimming. This is a good school academically and there was already diversity on the team.’

Kertzchner is one of three SU swimmers on the roster, along with Boral and senior Spencer Raymond, who spent their high school days in Europe. Even though Walker recruits international talent with regularity, the swimmers still sometimes face tough transitions to life in the United States.

‘At first it was very hard,’ Boral said. ‘I was very shy and kind of afraid to speak to people. After two to three weeks things were much better and I felt much more comfortable.’

Said Raymond: ‘Sometimes there are language problems between each other. But the effect is really a good one. The diverse group of people makes it so that there is really no outcast. Everyone in a sense is an outcast and that only makes us closer.’

Published on February 17, 2004 at 12:00 pm