That incredible Olympic moment -- journeyman Jason Lezak's unexpected 400-meter-relay anchor leg in Beijing, China -- not only transfixed the women's swim team at San José State University, it inspired the Spartans too.
In October, the Spartans won the inaugural Western Athletic Conference Shootout at New Mexico State in rather shocking fashion. For SJSU was a heavy underdog entering that two-day meet.
Before departing for Las Cruces, SJSU coach Sage Hopkins showed his swimmers a video of Lezak overtaking France's Alain Bernard (who had vowed before the Olympics to "smash" the Americans) to win the gold medal.
"After that race," Hopkins says, "Lezak spoke about how he didn't want to let his country down, or let the U.S. swim team down, or let the other three relay guys down. We talked about that before we left for New Mexico, and I reminded them again on Friday, the first day of the meet, that when they get up on the (starting) blocks, they're there for the whole team -- it's a commitment to the team."
Hopkins is all about team. After that Friday, he pushed his swimmers even harder.
"Ladies," he said, "we got to find a way to get a little faster -- an inch faster will make a difference; that's a tenth of a second. If you can do that, we can win this thing."
That's exactly what took place.
Hopkins' message, on top of Lezak's example, motivated the Spartans to stun the WAC competition. They defeated Nevada, the two-time defending WAC champion, for the first time in 23 years and only the second time since SJSU launched women's swimming in the early 1970s.
After the WAC Shootout, two WAC coaches approached Hopkins to lavish praise on his program.
"Mike Richmond of Nevada asked to speak to my team," he said. "We gathered the team around, and he told them, 'Ladies, in nine years of being in the WAC, that's the finest performance I've ever seen.'
"And Casey Converse of the Air Force Academy, a former Olympian, came up to me and said, 'How did you get your girls to be that good on the second day of the meet, even better than they were on the first day?'"
Both Richmond and Converse were impressed, especially with SJSU's team spirit and toughness under pressure. Jason Lezak would have been proud.
"Probably one of my best memories in the sport of swimming," says Hopkins, "was the team's excited reaction when they found out we had won the WAC Shootout. They yelled and screamed and jumped up and down. I had tears in my eyes."
SJSU has had great women's swimmers in the past in Lynn Vidali and Angie Wester-Krieg, both two-time Olympians. But the 35-year-old Hopkins, now in his fourth season as head coach after serving one year as interim head coach, is developing what could be in time the Spartans' next most successful women's program.
"That's the goal," he says. "We've been fourth in the conference championships the last two years, the highest we've ever placed. Our goal this year is to break into the top three. We need to be able to challenge ourselves every year."
Hopkins is on pace, if the WAC Shooutout is any indication. Three quarters of this year's team are freshmen and sophomores, primarily from California, although freshmen Heather Denman is from Maryland and Amy Friedhoff is from the Seattle area. And Hopkins' recruiting classes these last two years have been judged the WAC's best by CollegeSwimming. com and Swimming World Magazine.
Denman embodied the Spartans' team effort at the WAC Shootout. She slipped in the bleachers Friday and bruised her knee and hip badly, thus didn't swim that day. On Saturday, she broke the SJSU backstroke record while leading off the 400-medley relay.
"Another thing about Las Cruces," says Hopkins, "is that it's almost 4,500 feet in elevation. We were the only sea-level team there, so everyone else had that altitude advantage on us."
As it turned out, it didn't matter. The Spartans wouldn't let anything overcome them, just like Lezak against the Frenchmen in Beijing. Or like Rocky Balboa against Apollo Creed.
"For Lezak to do what he did was unbelievable,'' says Hopkins. "He was called a 'choker' in Athens." But the 32-year old's 46.06' anchor leg in the Beijing relay turned out to be the fastest split in history. "Whenever something like that happens that is an inspirational story, whether it's sports or business, I put that story in my desk drawer -- I've got a huge file of them."
Lots of fuel for when Hopkins needs to make a Knute Rockne motivational speech.
How challenging has it been for Hopkins to build his swim program?
"One of the big things I emphasize is that it's a team sport at the college level," he said. "Oftentimes, as swimmers are coming up through the club system in the U.S., it's more individually focused. So coaching team swimming takes a lot of selling.
"The sport itself is based on two factors: mental toughness and how good a shape the swimmers are in. Combining those two overriding factors with technique requires a lot of training. Most of these girls have been in the pool two to four hours a day, six days a week, ever since the eighth grade, taking only a couple weeks off each year. So there's really no off-season, like you have with other sports."
If that seems like cruel and inhuman punishment, Hopkins has two words: Michael Phelps, who won eight gold medals in Beijing. Hopkins noted that Phelps didn't take a single day off after beginning training for Beijing right after the 2004 Olympics in Athens, where he won six gold medals. So it's not hard to urge his team to follow the example of an athlete who has the most gold medals of any Olympian.
Hopkins wants his swimmers to compete academically as well. The team's grade-point average is 3.0, or a B average. He coached 14 Academic All-Americans last year, when SJSU made its first appearance in the CollegeSwimming. com Mid-Major Division I Power Ranking at No. 22, while breaking four school records.
In the pool or in the classroom, the Spartans are making undeniable waves.
- Dave Newhouse, '64
Sage Hopkins is a cum laude graduate of Cal State- Bakersfield, where he was captain of the swim team and was a seven-time All-American. He was later an assistant swim coach at CSUB, helping guide the Roadrunners to a second-place finish in the NCAA Division II championships in 1995-96.
In 1997, Hopkins became head coach and chief operator officer of the Bakersfield Swim Club. Three years later, he moved north to the De Anza Cupertino Aquatics program as associate director and associate head coach, while also serving as an assistant coach at De Anza Community College.
Hopkins became the SJSU interim swim coach in 2005-2006, before being named the official head coach in April 2006. Two of his Spartans, Brie Marhenke and Ashley Vrieze, competed in the 50-meter freestyle and 100-meter backstroke, respectively, in this year's U.S. Olympic Team Trials.
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