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BRANDON - For the past three years, Laura Ghilik-Micu and Mio Vasic have been working double shifts to restore the winning tradition for the Blue Wave Swim Team at the Brandon Swim and Tennis Club.
Included in the Blue Wave wall of champions are U.S. Olympic medalists Brooke Bennett and Maritza Correia, plus Peter Banks, an Olympic coach for Ireland and the United States.
Although the program has not produced an Olympian in a few years, a couple of prospects - Will Viana, 12, and Giorgie Graves, 10 - are part of the club's new wave of promising young swimmers. Both hard-working youngsters are ready to be transformed from pool cherubs to Olympic hopefuls. They have been part of the Blue Wave for only a year.
Viana won an individual state championship last summer in the Florida Junior Olympics and Graves won a bronze medal. More than a dozen swimmers ages 10-14 are training as much as eight hours a week with hopes of becoming Blue Wave Olympians.
Correia, a women's 4x100-meter relay silver medalist in Athens, a state champion four years running at Tampa Bay Tech and a national collegiate champ at the University of Georgia, learned to swim in the Blue Wave program.
"Giorgie's all-time favorite swimming heroine is Maritza," Vasic said. "They call one another frequently and talk about swimming. That reaching back to help the younger swimmers coming along has been a tremendous help to Giorgie. She takes the advice and puts it into practice immediately."
A few weeks ago, Graves broke Bennett's nearly 15-year-old club record in the 50-meter butterfly for age 10. Graves' bronze medal in the Junior Olympics was in the 50 butterfly.
"Maritza is my friend and my favorite swimmer," Graves said. "When she talks to me on the phone, she is always very encouraging. My dream is to be an Olympic swimmer like her, but the earliest will be eight years from now. I absolutely am becoming a better swimmer with the Blue Wave under coaches Laura and Mio."
Vasic says Graves, a fifth-grade homeschooled student in Brandon, is flexible. She can compete well in distance and sprint events and continues to improve in all strokes. Viana won his gold medal in the 200 individual medley, which shows his flexibility in all strokes.
"For Will, as with all the swimmers in our program, we try not to push them toward a particular stroke or event," Vasic said. "Will learned to swim well, while his father, who is in the military, was stationed in Germany. They moved here about a year ago and he has really been improving. He is one of several swimmers in the program who could very well have one or more Olympic cuts in four years and qualify for the trials. We plan to put together plans for those who, with parents permission, want to work toward that goal."
Viana, a seventh grader also homeschooled, says the program has helped him improve, but neither he nor his family knows how long he will be able to continue with the Blue Wave. "My dad is in the Army and although our family likes it here, we don't always know where we will go next," Viana said. "Mio and Laura are both fine coaches and give us hard workouts. I don't necessarily like the hard work, but I definitely like the positive results it gets me. Swimming is fun to me. I will go as far as God wants me to go in swimming."