Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 20, 1993                   TAG: 9307200473
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By RALPH BERRIER JR. STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD                                LENGTH: Medium

YOU'LL FIND HER IN THE POOL

Water.

Chlorine.

Tina Tynan.

Not necessarily in that order.

Tynan, a 16-year-old rising senior at Radford High School, spends as many as five hours a day - six days a week, 10 months a year - either practicing or competing for the New River Valley-based Southwest Aquatic Team.

It's a regimen she has maintained since she was 12 years old. In the past four years, Tynan has been to no fewer than five national swim meets while winning numerous medals and awards in a variety of events at the local, regional and state levels.

Of course, she doesn't always swim. She holds down a summer job, too. She's a lifeguard at Round Meadow Country Club in Christiansburg.

A pool fixture rivaled only by lounge chairs and oversized ugly beach towels, Tynan has taken the plunge more times than Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor combined.

Swimming "has pretty much become part of my daily life," Tynan said. "Like waking up in the morning."

Said SWAT coach Bill Beecher: "She's been a hard worker. She's been a very versatile and very dedicated swimmer."

At her own school, however, Tina Tynan is a fish out of water. Radford High School, one of the smallest Group AA schools in the state, has no swim team.

"There's not a lot of interest at the high school in swimming," she said.

In fact, the only New River Valley schools capable of pooling its swimming talents are Blacksburg and Pulaski County. The Virginia High School League offers no state swimming championships, but several larger schools have swim teams that compete in invitational meets.

At Radford, school officials thought Tynan's year-round dedication to her sport warranted some kind of distinction.

That's why - even though it does not, and most likely never will, have a swim team - Radford awarded Tynan a varsity letter in the sport of swimming three years ago. She's gotten a letter each year since.

Beecher and Tina's father, Jim, submitted a list of criteria to Radford's administration that they believed exhibited Tina's commitment to swimming was equal to or greater than that of other athletes in other sports.

The aforementioned training schedule was a part of that criteria. Radford athletic director Norman Lineburg, who has put together some rigorous practice sessions of his own in 22 years of coaching the Bobcat football team, was impressed.

"Here's a kid who has devoted all of her time and energy to swimming," Lineburg said. "She has certainly spent as much time in her sport - if not more - than many of our other athletes. I was more than happy to letter her in swimming."

This year, Team Tynan will earn a fourth varsity letter. It will be another honor in a lifetime spent going off the deep end.

Tina Tynan's water log:

At age 4, she learned to swim in the backyard pool of her family's Wooster, Ohio, home. When the family moved to Radford a year later, Tynan's mother, Ronnie, got her on a team (the "Aquacats") and swimming competitively.

"They called her the `teeniest Aquacat'," her father said.

From ages 5-12, she swam for the Aquacats, Roanoke Gators, Blacksburg Sunfish, Pulaski YMCA and SWAT.

Slowly but surely, she is swimming her way across the country. She has competed in meets in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio and Florida.

This time next year, Tynan hopes to be swimming collegiately at either the Naval Academy, James Madison or Hamilton College in Chatham, N.Y.

Despite her size (she takes up just 5-feet, 2-inches of a swim lane), rarely has Tynan been in over her head. In fact, she skipped last weekend's Virginia Summer Awards meet in Radford because her times are too fast for the Class B and C levels.

All of SWAT's older swimmers face the same training schedules. Nearly all the swimmers aged 12-18 are in the pool every afternoon and most weekends.

"I think anybody who does this sport has to be dedicated," Beecher said. "It's not an easy sport. All good swimmers swim year-round."

Tynan has forsaken any interest she may have had in any other sports, including a promising career in basketball.

"I've always thought swimming was the tougher of the two [basketball and swimming]," Tynan said. "It takes so much time and dedication if you want to do it. Sometimes, I think about what I missed out on, but I have fun doing what I do and who I swim with."