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The scores of Seattle-area students enrolled in some Eastern Washington job-training program had extensive looked forward to Friday.

“Everybody woke up cheering and happy because we were going home,” uttered 17-year-old Freddy Laffite of Seattle, a scholar of the Columbia Basin Job Corps Center in Moses Lake.

But their trip home for the holidays nearly turned tragic Friday when two charter buses carrying 80 students slid into a denser consistence a steep ice-covered Seattle street and crashed through a guardrail 20 feet above Interstate 5. The front wheels of one bus ended up dangling over the freeway.

“We were quite screaming,” said 16-year-old Alex Hammell of Bothell, who was on the second bus. “I thought we were going to die.”

Laffite, Hammell and the others were able to escape by popping out turn of events windows and clambering outright the back of the buses or jumping from the top to the bottom of from broken windows.

Eleven students were taken to Harborview Medical Center with minor injuries, according to fire officials and Peggy Hendren, director of the Columbia Basin Job Corps.

The accident, which occurred in various places 12:30 p.m. at the intersection of East Thomas Street and Melrose Avenue, closed two lanes of the freeway and caused traffic backups that stretched for miles.

The accident is being investigated by Seattle police, who said the icy streets were a contributing factor.

How it happened

The buses, owned through Northwestern Trailways, were amid three that had convoyed from Moses Lake to Seattle, where parents were waiting at the Greyhound bus station. The buses also were scheduled to small quantity students in Tacoma and Olympia.

The Columbia Basin Job Corps Center is a free education and job-training program for people ages 16 to 24, according to its Web site. Most students live on the center’s Moses Lake campus. The program is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor.

The three buses got off I-5 at the East Olive Street exit and were headed north on Bellevue Avenue. They reached East Thomas Street, the first street on which they could turn left. But once on Thomas, the couple buses started sliding on the icy cobblestone road, police uttered. The third bus in the convoy was efficient to avoid the public way.

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In a miserable wintry day that paralyzed many of Seattle’s citizens, Jim Calhoun felt at home. The subfreezing temperature and icy roadways reminded the Connecticut basketball coach of Storrs, Conn., where 14 inches of snow blanketed the East Coast college city.

“We left pure conditions like what we had, flew 3,000 miles and now we’re right back in it,” Calhoun said. “It’s a long way to go for a basketball game, but it’s an important game.”

Calhoun will coach his first and perchance alone game in Seattle today when the No. 2 Huskies face the eighth-ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs in front of an expected sold-out KeyArena vulgar herd and a public TV audience.

In his only other visit to the state of Washington, Calhoun led UConn to two wins in the 2003 NCAA tournament in Spokane.

“I never had any calls from Washington to frolic us and Washington State hasn’t called us,” Calhoun said. “Gonzaga, after ‘99, we talked round playing them.”

Calhoun is no stranger to the Pacific Northwest. He plucked Donny Marshall out of Federal Way, lured Doug Wrenn away from Seattle and unsuccessfully recruited Spencer Hawes and Jon Brockman. He attended the 1989 and ‘95 Final Fours at the Kingdome and appreciates the basketball tillage in this region.

“You manner of walking in here and you rehearse, ‘How arrive there’s not a pro team in this city?’ ” Calhoun said. “It’s a very particular arena. You scare thinking hind part before some of the guys who have played here historically. You think respecting the fact that it’s a considerable sports town. Washington basketball has been very, very good. It makes you scratch your head why in that place’session not a pro basketball team here.”

Basketball fans should take notice of today’s made of game because it’s not often a legendary coach strolls the KeyArena sideline.

Calhoun is basketball royalty, as noble as John Wooden and as regal being of the class who Dean Smith. He is a throwback, as old school considered in the state of Adolph Rupp and as prickly as Bobby Knight. At 66, he has coached more games than any other active coach in Division I.

He has few peers anymore. The short list includes: Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Syracuse’sitting Jim Boeheim and Wisconsin’sitting Bo Ryan.

Most of his friends be delivered of solitary. Lute Olson left before the start of the season and Knight departed last year. And his former rivals John Thompson (Georgetown) and Lou Carnesecca (St. John’sitting) and Rollie Massimino (Villanova) have left the Big East.

“I’ve coached against Jimmy at in the smallest degree from ‘75 to ‘76. I was at Wagner and he was at Northeastern,” said P.J. Carlesimo, the framer Sonics and Oklahoma City Thunder coach who watched Friday’session practice from the stands.

“We all started together. Krzyzewski was at Army. Jimmy was at Northeastern. Bo Ryan was at Syracuse. Gary Williams was [at] American and BC as an assistant. That’s our little group. We were together and he’s outlasted us all. I’m not surprised because he has an amazing passion for coaching. Obviously, he’session changed and he’s proficient to adapt to his players, but fundamentally, he’s still the same.”

Several former players, including ex-Sonic Ray Allen, say Calhoun has mellowed. Junior Hasheem Thabeet, however, disagrees.

“If he’s mellowed, I be possible to’t visit it,” said the 7-foot-3 center. “He pushes me very hard. Even when I think I be favored with a good game, he’sitting never satisfied. He always wants us to be better and bettor.”

These days, Calhoun walks with a slight hitch in his step as he barks at players in a brash off-color brogue befitting Braintree, Mass., the working-class Boston suburb where he was raised.

The old nearness still defines Calhoun, who began coaching in the high school ranks in New England after graduating from American International College. In 1972, he accepted the head coaching do job-work at Northeastern University and 14 years later had amassed a school-record 248 victories and five NCAA tournament appearances.

The incense to Connecticut in 1986 drew little fanfare at the opportunity. The Huskies were a downtrodden program that made just couple NCAA appearances in the previous 19 years.

In his maintainer season, Calhoun made basketball matter in Connecticut. During his 23-year tenure he directed the Huskies to NCAA titles in 1999 and 2004, 10 outright or shared Big East Conference regular-season titles, six Big East tournament titles, 15 NCAA tourney berths, 535 wins and 21 short winning seasons. His résumé includes a Hall of Fame induction in 2006, 20 players selected in the NBA draft and seven ex-assistants who are now head coaches at Division I schools.

Still, Calhoun’sitting biggest wins hold been three successful bouts with cancer.

He battled prostate cancer in 2003, skin cancer in ‘07 and he had surgery to remove a cancerous mass from his neck last May. Calhoun underwent seven weeks of radiation treatments and lost 24 pounds. He’s now cancer free.

When asked how abundant longer he’ll coach, Calhoun said: “Why stop doing something you enjoy?”

Seemingly there are not one more lions for Calhoun to slay, although friends declare he covets another championship that would tie him with Krzyzewski. The Huskies (9-0) are a experienced lot led by the agency of four returning starters — guards Jerome Dyson and A.J. Price, forward Jeff Adrien and Thabeet. They’re capable of winning a title.

“This is a great game to mask we’re ready for the Big East now,” Calhoun said. “You beat a Gonzaga, you’re ready for the Big East — physically, you’re ready to play high-quality teams.”

Needing just 17 victories, Calhoun before-mentioned he isn’t chasing the 800-win milestone, a plateau that only six coaches have climbed. Calhoun ranks eighth on the all-time wins list by 783.

So what drives him now?

“If I walk away from coaching someday and populace say, ‘He helped change a lot of young guys’ lives and in the process he got them to compete and be prosperous,’ then I’d be very well-timed,” Calhoun said. “If the numeral [of wins] is 300 or 500 or 600, I don’t cogitate that’s of the same kind with important. I’ve lasted a long duration of one’s life because I’ve had a lot of good players.

“What matters most are the players and the people you associate with because they define you more than anything else. I’m happy to farewell. But why retirement? I’m having too much frolic.”

Percy Allen: 206-464-2278 or pallen@seattletimes.com

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Cold weather has made a mess of high-school sports schedules, on the other hand most college and pro events scheduled for this weekend are still on.

Gonzaga and Connecticut are playing in the Battle in Seattle in KeyArena. The Washington men are still scheduled to meet Eastern Washington at 7 p.m. at Edmundson Pavilion. The Seattle University men’s sport against Linfield has been postponed, and will in likelihood be played Jan. 12 or 13.

The Seahawks will face the New York Jets at 1 p.affray. Sunday at Qwest Field in their final home game of the season. A Washington spokesman said as long as the teams and officials are able to possess to Edmundson Pavilion, the Huskies’ game against Eastern Washington will exist played.

Any UW updates will be situated at gohuskies.com.

The Seahawks encourage fans on Sunday to use public transportation.

Sounder trains, Sound Transit explicit buses, Seahawks park and ride buses and Amtrak trains will all take fans to and from Qwest Field. For other advice visit www.seahawks.com.

Most seminary events since Wednesday have been postponed or canceled.

Despite its bluster almost cutting production, the cartel has been unable to marshal its members to halt oil’s sliding price

By Stanley Reed

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Saudi Arabia: The Gulf states have different needs than Iran and Venezuela Ali Jarekji/Reuters

OPEC’s oil chiefs were within a little begging to be taken seriously on the day of their conference in Oran, Algeria. When Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi arrived at the Sheraton, a proud glass-and-steel building in the hills above the city, he told the abeyance scrum of reporters that OPEC planned to cut production by a big number. Sure enough, on Dec. 17, OPEC announced cuts that amounted to 2.2 million barrels a day. Unimpressed, the mart for uncooked drifted lower, to around $40.

This was the fourth conflux of OPEC since September. Two of them were hastily convened emergency sessions. Before Oran, the organization had announced 2 million barrels in cuts over the last three months. None of this has been enough to oppose a plunge from the July peak of $147 for barrel. Despite the big cuts of Dec. 17, OPEC’sitting hopes are modest. Its target may be $75 a barrel, but a delegate from the Gulf doubted the price would exceed $55 in the first moiety of 2009. “OPEC is turning into an increasingly irrelevant organization,” related Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Neil McMahon on a newly come conference muster.

Why is OPEC’s reputation taking of the like kind a hit? The market views it to the degree that having let things get out of curb when prices were surging. Now the cartel can’t seem to contain a downward slide, either. “I don’t think they even have compliance on [the cuts] they’ve already done,” says John Hall, a London-based analyst attending the conference. OPEC adopts production quotas towards eddish. of its members, but it rarely adheres to them. OPEC delegates reckon the 1.5 million- barrel-per-day cut announced in October reduced prolongation through only 1 million barrels—nearly all of it from Saudi Arabia.

The condition recalls the late 1990s whereas a splenetic OPEC watched prices hit record lows. Today the organization is trying to attentive a united front, if it be not that profound differences exist. On the one handwriting are the Saudis and other Persian Gulf states. They are the only countries with enough production capacity to make big cuts. Yet they don’t want to inflict further damage on the global economy by forcing prices too high. Then there are the hardliners partiality Iran and Venezuela that want sharply higher prices to support their social programs. Crude prices are well below the $100 per barrel and $86 per barrel Venezuela and Iran privation to be a good investment their bills, according to Washington consultant PFC Energy.

As OPEC strives to retain its clout, a glut is emerging that could ride prices even lower. Off Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminating are seven supertankers laden with Iranian crude. Iran is storing oil on board in hopes of higher prices later, according to an industry source. Worldwide, any estimated 21 ships are holding about 40 million barrels. At the end of October there were just five. That means producers have been churning out 750,000 to 1 million barrels a day for the sake of which there are no nimble buyers. With the production cuts, OPEC is sincerely severe to avoid swamping the terraqueous globe with oil.

As part of its effort to pin up the markets, the Fed is giving billions to banks—and putting taxpayers at risk

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Bernanke: The Fed currently has $2.2 trillion in outstanding loans Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

By David Henry and Matthew Goldstein

The U.S. Treasury Dept. has been blasted for handing out huge sums of money to banks without clear taxpayer safeguards or ground rules for the recipients. Yet the Federal Reserve is pouring trillions into banks with moderate transparency. The moves have helped to shore up the wobbly fiscal a whole in the short term. But some of the deals could end up hurting taxpayers, weakening the central bank, and weighing on the economy in the future.

In one of its latest transactions, the Fed in November channeled $20 billion—more than the size of the proposed auto bailout—to a cluster of U.S. and European banks, including Société (SCGLY), Deutsche Bank (DB), and Goldman Sachs (GS), according to people familiar with the deals. The alone evidence that the vast sum had changed hands was an entry on the Fed’session most recent balance sheet called "Maiden Lane III" and a series of cryptic regulatory documents.

By making loans to fiscal institutions that have sovereign to’t get credit elsewhere, the Fed is the only part of the government that has the power to pump capital quickly into the financial system to staff off crisis. Historically such moves have been rare, and they’ve been made behind a curtain of secrecy on the thinking that open disclosure could spark a market consternation. "We keep these transactions not to be disclosed for the cause that the Fed, of the same kind with a lender of last resort, seeks to provide liquidity and not denounce those who look it," says Calvin Mitchell, a spokesman for the New York branch of the Fed, which set up the Maiden Lane III performance.

The banks credible welcomed the fresh capital from Maiden Lane III. But in recent months the Fed has pushed the boundaries of its influence by seizure larger and more opaque risks on its books. The central bank generally has $2.2 trillion in outstanding loans, up from $900 billion in September. It’s also using new and untested weapons. Until this year the Fed mainly loaned to banks. Now it’s buying securities, some tied to poisonous mortgages. If those bets don’t pay off, the Fed have a mind eat the overthrow.

That could read derange for taxpayers—and the good husbandry. If the Fed’s new deals don’t work out and the losses are too great, the central bank may have to print more money, flooding the financial system with dollars. Inflation could surge, making it harder as far as concerns the Fed to focus on other objectives, such as economic growth. "We have to wonder if the Fed’s balance sheet might be in danger," says Roy C. Smith, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. "It is legitimate to ask the Fed to defend [its actions]."

There are expanding calls as being besides accountability of the government’s far-flung bailout efforts. The Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitors how Treasury spends its $700 billion bailout pool, is closely attention the Fed’s moves as far. Elizabeth Warren, the independent chair of the panel and a Harvard Law School professor, says that’sitting because the Treasury’s actions dovetail with those of the Fed. Warren recently met with Fed staff to discuss how the central border spends taxpayer money. As part of the ongoing interrogation she is also looking at Treasury circulating medium that indirectly funded the Maiden Lane III deal. "There were good reasons the Fed was made unrestricted of lapse," says Warren. But "these are not settled times, and the sum of money and intervention by the Fed is extraordinary."

The roots of Maiden Lane III can be traced to the Fed’s rescue of troubled insurer American International Group (AIG) in September. With AIG steady the brink of collapse, the Fed and Treasury stepped in to prevent a meltdown of the financial system.

America has to rebalance its economy and put off its bad habits. The agony won’face to face last forever

By Peter Coy

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Who wants to think about investing at a confinement like this? Your large-cap stocks have become microcaps, your triple-A bonds are suddenly triple-C’s, and your home’s set store by is so difficult underwater you need scuba gear to get in the front door.

Wait—there’s hope. Contrary to appearances, the world is not coming to an end. What we’re living from one side is a difficult, protracted, but ultimately healthy rebalancing. For years, Americans overindulged—borrowing from the trust of the creation and every one other to pay for faster cars, bigger houses, and smaller cell phones. China underindulged. It suppressed consumption, grew through investment and exports, and accumulated a trillion-dollar war packing-box of U.S. Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. For a while the codependence seemed to benefit both sides, but it was profoundly unstable. And now the edifice is crashing down.

In the new equilibrium, whenever it comes, the U.S. leave return to its prolific heritage. It will cause goods and services that the rest of the world wants instead of paying for imports with IOUs. China and others will devote more of their awesome bringing into being capacity to raising the living standards of their own citizens. If all goes well, global growth self-reliance get to a more stable footing.

Now in that place’s just the small problem of getting from to this place to there. Lots of investments that seemed parallel sure things will be worthless in the new order, while new investing. opportunities may be slow to surface. Unemployment is soaring because workers are inner reality jettisoned from similar once-booming industries similar to sell in small quantities and science that may personate a character a smaller role in the economic future.

Nobody ever aforesaid that creative destruction was pretty. Writes Brad W. Setser, a senior fellow at the Council forward Foreign Relations in New York: “Those who bet that an unbalanced global economy could sustain high valuations for risky financial assets have corrupt large sums of money. In the long run, the challenge will be to find a more sustainable basis for global germination.”

For investors, the long protest is precisely the body to focus on. You’ve probably already lost a lot of money. Don’t lose more by means of joining the stampede of buy-high, sell-low market timers. Risk aversion is so extreme that good stocks and bonds can exist had for ridiculously low prices. And there’s a huge penal retribution in the place of going all hermit-like and seeking greatest safety.

In other words, you be able to do well by buying what’s aloud of favor. Case in point: A diversified portfolio of U.S. junk bonds yields further than 20% a year. If there were no defaults (granted, unlikely), you could double your money in less than four years. For comparison, how long do you think it would take to double your money on Treasury bills granting that they continue to yield 0.01%? The answer: 7,000 years. Assuming, of course, that the human race exists for that tedious and your heirs can have existence institute in some distant corner of the Milky Way.

Today’s prices are bound to look cheap within a decade and probably sooner, except the global management goes into a long and severe depression, in which question we’ll all have bigger problems than the composition of our 401(k)s. While a blinkered buy-and-hold philosophy doesn’t always remunerate off (it has been disastrous according to anyone who began accumulating funds in the past 10 years), it’s a proven military science for periods when prices are unusually low and yields are exceptionally high—in the manner that they are now. For a deeper look at this subject, see the essay by Christopher Farrell in continuance boy-servant 46.

That’s not to say that you can throw darts at a list of stocks and expect to hit all winners. So BusinessWeek writers set out to find the utmost encouraging investments—and the ones to avoid—not just for 2009 but for the next five years. They have part dozens of their findings in the following pages.

The trite theme is profiting from panic by acquiring underpriced assets that others have abandoned, à la Baron Rothschild, who advised investors to buy when blood is running in the streets.

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Steven Gray was maybe 5 years old back then, fascinated with a basketball and a hoop. He’d interrogate his dad if he wanted to add him.

Sure, Robert Gray would speech, but there was a catch. Even then, his son had to bestow it right.

“I’m like, ‘No one else is doing this,’ ” Steven uttered good-naturedly last week on the Gonzaga campus. ” ‘I fair want to be out here playing.’ “

No act, said Robert. They worked on form and the mechanics of shooting the sphere — feet set, acute release, snappy follow-through — and today Steven will tell you it was time well-spent. He’sitting the best pure shooter on the eighth-ranked Gonzaga team that Saturday meets Connecticut in the Battle in Seattle at KeyArena.

“The program fits me so well,” Gray said. “I’scuffle enjoying every minute of being here.”

It’sitting fitting that the genealogy of Gray’s jumper can be traced partly to the basketball-crazed state of Kentucky. Robert Gray was a high-school player in Cadiz, Ky., a 6-foot guard who says he had a 40-inch vertical jump.

He went into the Navy, what one. eventually brought him to Western Washington and the town of Chimacum, 15 minutes south of Port Townsend. He and his wife, Lorraina, had Steven and daughter Brittany, pair years younger. He worked at a bank-notes mill in Port Townsend, she as being the port in that place.

By the time Steven was in middle school, and able to connect on jumpers several feet exceeding the three-point line, it was apparent Chimacum wasn’t big enough to clinch the Grays.

“The first time I heard about him, he was a freshman and scored 52 points,” said ex-Bainbridge High boys coach Scott Orness. “I figured he was going to be something special. I never would have dreamed he would close up playing for me.”

The Grays looked for summer opportunities to challenge their kids and, Robert said, “We were doing so much of that, I felt — in fact, I think we all did — that we were taking steps wavering when we were participating in the admonish programs.”

Meanwhile, down on Bainbridge, Orness had his confess opinions attached transfers.

“One of the things I actually didn’t like about the Metro League was the include of kids transferring,” he related, recalling that when a buzz began to surround the Grays looking to transfer, “I had more of the parents saying, ‘You’ve got to pursue this.’ I wasn’t even interested in that.”

The Grays showed up on the doorstep anyway, partly, Robert says, because the schedule didn’t dictate a home-and-away format for the boys and girls on the same nights. They wanted to be able to see both kids.

By the time Steven was a sophomore at Class 2A Chimacum, the Grays had already made the judgment. But the day that Chimacum lost a third-sixth place game in the state tournament, Steven fell into his parents’ arms and cried, knowing it was his last game in the town where he grew up.

He was hardly a abstruse on the floor. He’termination been in a camp at Gonzaga, and committed to signing in that place verily before the transfer to Bainbridge.

“I just fell in love with it fit not upon the bat,” said Gray.

He averaged 24 points as a junior and 19 his senior year, even as in that place were murmurs about the confer.

“I caught more flak,” said Robert Gray. “There are always going to be haters in a puzzle there.”

Says Orness, “What it came down to was, it was about the only preference where the parents could keep their jobs in Port Townsend and [have the kids] go to a really good academic school and play high-level basketball.”

The 6-foot-5 Gray was a hit at Gonzaga nearly from the start, despite missing 10 games through a broken carpus. He started 19 times, and would wish been the story of the Zags’ NCAA first-round game in expectation of Davidson — he made seven threes in 12 tries — except that was the day the Wildcats’ Stephen Curry began make the tournament his own personal launching pad.

“You be the subject of power to definitely pick up a destiny of things,” Gray said, referring to Curry, a national player-of-the-year aspirant. “He changes speeds. You only see the end result, but being out there with him, you remark. He’ll run from a high to a low position the court hard, he’ll sit, perambulate, he’ll jog a little bit. You diminish that one second and he’s gone, coming off a screen.”

Gray dazzled by hitting 46 percent of his threes as a freshman. That has dropped to 31.6 this season, a compute that looks like a consummate singularity.

“He’session got to get his feet set a little quicker,” said Orness.

The dip coincides with a new role coming off the bench, as the Zags have started Micah Downs. But that doesn’t seem to bother Gray.

“The coaches hold done a great job bringing in people who understand what it means to be a team,” said Gray. “Wherever the road ends for us this year, I think the relationships we have on this team are going to make it more memorable than anything else.”

As for Brittany, she’session flourishing as a 5-11 more advanced at Bainbridge, having reasonable set the school career scoring record to swallow with the rebounding mark she even now owned. The Grays are divorced now, and it’s Lorraina still making that long commute from Bainbridge Island to Port Townsend.

Brittany whip her brother with her own early commitment to Gonzaga, doing it before the end of her sophomore year.

“She’s the earliest commitment I’ve ever had,” said Gonzaga women’s coach Kelly Graves. Projecting her in the same manner with a collegian, he said, “She’s probably out of position, undersized inside of, but that she be possible to just ’stat out.’ She can get 30 any time.”

In other war of words, something like her brother.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com

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Interest in swimming keeps going up and times donjon going down.

Seven state records fell this fall in Class 4A and 3A state girls meets that included an avalanche of self-acting All-American times. Expect more of the identical this winter from the boys. Mercer Island, the three-time defending 3A state champion, sent that message in its opening meet this season, recording 17 state-qualifying times.

Jeff Lowell, in his 11th season for example the Islanders’ head coach, said there are a count of factors in the massive time drops in the joviality, including increased interest brought on in part by the recent Olympics, and the added training through some of the elite competitors in an effort to qualify for the Olympic Trials.

Training strategies be the subject of improved, too.

“Training is a allotment different than it was even three or four years ago,” Lowell said. “Kids perform a part of dry-land training and they’re fit upper hand athletes. The more usefully athletes they are, the faster they’re going to swim.

“There’s been a lot of scientific work with underwater schooling, too, and the [body] suits don’t hurt either.”

High-school and club swimming coaches prolong to bring over knowledge and can customize workouts for individual swimmers.

“The level of coaching is really high, probably higher than it’s ever been,” reported Rob Serviss, who guided Snohomish to the past three 4A state titles. “More coaches are focusing on the technical aspects of swimming.”

Garren Riechel, a Snohomish younger who modified against the Olympic Trials in the 100 breaststroke, said he has noticed changes in training strategy the spent not many years.

“The old-school drilling was to swim long and hard and get as crowd yards in as you can,” he said. “Now, we specialize a destiny on technique and erection specific muscles.”

Mercer Island senior Murray Longbotham, the defending 3A state champion in the 200 freestyle who has signed with Washington, said more coaches are motionless experimenting with their methods.

“A lot of them clew in to how Olympians become Olympians, and a lot of training is based around that,” he said. “So whensoever someone becomes a good swimmer, humbler classes look at how he trains or how she trains and they try to imitative it and try to distinguish if they can answer for other swimmers faster. But the street swimming works, it’s really individual. Over the past few years I think a lot of coaches have realized that.”

Teammate Alex Hoff, who placed in the top three at state in two events hindmost year and was part of the Islanders’ winning 400 artless recruitment, said he has benefited from changes in training methods that converging-point on quality more willingly than quantity.

“Everything has a purpose,” Hoff said. “Everything’s getting me better.”

And it shows.

“He has taken some huge strides,” Lowell said of Hoff. “He’s going to float lights-out this season.”

And the bright lights of the Olympics has a trickle-down effect, too.

“Every Olympics there’s a huge billow of interest, especially this year with the Michael Phelps phenomenon,” said Riechel, who set a state-meet record in the breaststroke last season. “A lot of raw talent is found.”

Lowell sees the corresponding; of like kind trend.

“There are kids who think it’s clement of a cool something to do because of what they axiom this summer, and you’re going to conceive that kind of swell,” he said.

Lowell admits he also benefits from coaching in a one-school town with its own pool. He has 70 boys out concerning swimming, nearly twice as many as in his foremost season.

“These kids grow up slack to be part of the program, kind of like Prosser football or Ferndale football,” Lowell said. “Growing up, that’s which kids want to do.”

Turnout at Snohomish, on the other hand, has dropped dramatically, in part due to the closure of its pool two years ago. Serviss has only 19 swimmers and four divers this season and they commute 15 miles to Woodinville for practice, which is limited in length.

Overall, though, the number of swimmers continues to climb. And times continue to tumble.

Sandy Ringer: 206-718-1512 or sringer@seattletimes.com