There Was Really Something Bruin

Barrett got off the block so fast in the relay that he had a two-foot lead on Texas sophomore John Smith before they had swum halfway down the 25-yard pool. The team-scoring race was quite simple: If Texas won the relay, it would win the meet. Otherwise, barring a complete breakdown by UCLA , the Bruins would triumph.

All 1,000 fans in the Schroeder Center were on their feet screaming as Barrett completed his leg three-fourths of a body length ahead of Smith. His split of 43.49 would have been good enough to win the evening's 100-free final. It also left Barrett exhausted. He dragged himself out of the pool and slumped on the deck.

UCLA sophomore Chris Silva, perhaps the best black sprinter ever, widened the gap against Longhorn freshman John Pohl. "Nobody was taking that from me," said Silva later. "Nobody." Stuart MacDonald, a 6'7" junior, then brought the Bruins through the third leg with nearly a one-second lead. With Leamy up for UCLA , the only hope for Texas was a miracle performance by junior Eric Finical.

Finical, who had pulled out a victory for the Longhorns in Thursday's 400 medley relay with a superb anchor swim, lives in a different sort of animal house in Austin with three junior teammates. Breaststroker Nick Nevid and butterflyer William Paulus like to roam along nearby streams and in local woods hunting for snakes. They catch them with their bare hands and bring them home. Another housemate, Clay Britt, who won his third consecutive 100 backstroke title on Friday, prefers fish. Last Saturday morning he went to a Milwaukee pet shop and bought six piranhas to take back to Austin . "I have life insurance on them all—in my name," says Reese of his swimmers.

In another sense, the Texas team as a whole is unusual. It has an overall grade-point average of 3.0, has no physical education majors and engages in word play more often than video games on road trips. Butterflyer Todd Crosset, a philosophy major, has been known to pass the time translating Plato into English. And what kept the Longhorns in the meet on Saturday night weren't so much outstanding swims—freshman Rick Carey did win the 200 backstroke—as good dives. While none of the three other contending teams had qualified any divers for Brown Deer, Texas had brought two, freshman Matt Scoggin and sophomore Dave Lindsey, and they got the Long-horns nine points.

Finical closed out the Texas relay with an excellent 43.23 split, but Leamy, in his final collegiate swim, turned in a stunning 42.40. He touched at 2:53.15; the Bruins had not only won the team championship but, in the process, had also taken .70 off their seven-hour-old American record.

In the poolside bleachers, where the Longhorns and Bruins were sitting next to each other, the contrast was between gloom and absolute frenzy. UCLA Coach Ron (Stix) Ballatore was embracing a mob of swimmers and old friends. Suddenly he looked toward the far end of the Aquatic Center, where the scoreboard was placed on the three-meter diving platform. "I have to get a picture of that. I have to," he said, as though he doubted what he saw. The scoreboard read:

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As Barrett climbed out of the pool after his warm-down, Escalas, crying openly, hugged him. "I love you, Billy, I love you," he said, over and over. Ballatore then did the same thing, spoke the same words.

"The memories of this, of my races with Steve, they'll keep me warm late at night when I'm an old man," said Barrett. Said Florida senior Craig Beardsley , the only swimmer besides Barrett to set an individual American record in the meet—he reduced his 200 butterfly mark from 1:44.15 to 1:44.10—"There was a strange thing about this meet. Usually at the NCAAs you have all sorts of new faces, guys you never heard of, swimming phenomenal times. Here it was all the old guys, the familiar names, that won."