The Michigan Daily - SPORTSMonday - Monday, March 7, 1994 - 7 SHARP Continued from page 1 By the time he reached eighth ,grade, Royce realized that swimming was his sport and started to concentrate solely on it. He visited a friend at the Peddie Academy in New Jersey the next summer and came back to Texas sasking his parents if he could go to school there. "He had a really good friend who went (to Peddie) who used to live in Houston, and Royce went up and spent two weeks with him and swam with (Peddie coach) Chris Martin," Margret said. "He came home and said, 'I'd like to go to Peddie to school.' People in the south don't send their children to boarding schools, so we laughed a lot and said, 'right.' "After about six weeks at the senior high school here, he wasn't doing very well, and we said maybe we should check into (Peddie)." Royce believes his parents decision to let him go to Peddie was a turning point in his life. He had been hanging out with the "wrong crowd" and skipping school in order to show his parents up. When he finally got his wish to go to Peddie, his life started to change both in and out of the water. His grades improved, and his swimming got faster and faster. "I got to go up to Peddie and from there things changed," Royce said. "I got with my former coach Chris Martin and turned my life around. I *got school back together, got my swimming back together and made the Olympic team in 1992. "If I wouldn't have gotten out - the year after I left a friend of mine got shot at - who knows what would have happened. It's like the stories you hear all the time. It was hard going away from home, but I don't regret it at all." . Of course, Royce did get out, and his swimming started to improve dramatically under the tutelage of Martin. In the three and a half years he was there, Royce, along with good friend and 1992 Olympic gold medalist Nelson Diebel, helped lead Peddie to three straight high school national .championships. In fact, Martin - who is now *the coach at Florida - said it was Royce who really took the program at Peddie to the level of national dominance it held. "The men's program was built on the back of Royce Sharp," Martin said. "Royce set standards of :.training and commitment every single day. There were times when be'd even intimidate people. There *were people who said, 'I can't work *that hard.'" Royce may have lifted the kprogram, but he knows that Martin made him the swimmer he is today. In Royce's words, Martin transformed him from a swimmer who did not have fast enough times to swim for a Division III college into the swimmer who would set the American record in the 200-meter backstroke (1:58.66) at the 1992 Olympic Trials. Martin used Royce's discipline to turn his choppy stroke into a winner. "We tried to create an environment where doing the extraordinary was the norm and Royce jumped all over that," Martin said. "In all the years I've coached, I've never coached a kid that spent more minutes in the pool and paid that price. "He has a really high pain tolerance. I have trained him sometimes within an inch of his life. There was one time we trained him so hard that I had to take him out of the pool, feed him ice cream and wrap him in a blanket. He had swum every bit of energy out of his body." Royce's commitment to long hours of training - a standard which he started at Peddie - continues at Michigan. He swims more yardage than any other backstroker in the nation, if not the world. He enjoys doing 10,000 yards a day of backstroke (about two hours), because it not only builds up his heartrate and threshold, but because it builds up his confidence as well. He also enjoys using this distance ability to have fun at college dual meets. Royce has been known to swim the 1,000-yard freestyle event using the backstroke instead. In fact, this year he beat all the freestylers to the finish line at the Michigan State meet. "If I can beat freestlyers, that's great," Sharp said. "I like swimming long events. It's my talent, and I might as well show it off sometime." Despite his unorthodox stroke, Royce is able to use his strength , and endurance to increase his speed as he pulls himself through the water. Martin tried to alter the stroke early in Royce's career, but it slowed him down Although it may not be pretty or smooth, it gets the job done. "It's definitely not poetry in motion, but he has a very good rhythm to his stroke," Urbanchek said. "We don't score in swimming. He would get fours in artistic and sixes in technical merit. We have a lot of pretty swimmers who just can't go fast." Fast, however, is not a problem for Royce. His performance at the 1992 Olympic Trials in Indianapolis qualified him for the Olympic Games in Barcelona. Unfortunately, Sharp did not perform as well as he had hoped. His morning swim was not good enough to reach the final heat, and he had to settle for a very disappointing 11th-place finish at the time. What could have been another obstacle for Royce has become a springboard towards meeting his swimming aspirations. He now says that it was a great learning experience towards his ultimate goal - a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. "For me now, (the experience) was great. I've been there, and it's another building block toward a gold medal which is obviously the ultimate goal," Royce said. "It was a learning experience, because I didn't swim as well as I wanted to. "As an amateur athlete, you don't see all the cameras all the time. So, if you get to a situation like the Olympics where there are millions of people watching, you try to shut your mind off it, but you have to look around and experience it. So, that was a learning experience." Royce's greatest memory of the Olympics involved his friend Diebel. His gold-medal swim in the 100 breaststroke pumped Royce up for his swim and was an Olympic moment that both Royce and his parents will not soon forget. "When you are watching, you just try to stay calm, because you still have to swim," Royce said. "But I like to use teammates to get me ready so it got me psyched up." "It was unbelievable because we had known Nelson for a long time," Margret said. "I saw him between You don't know it yet - but we are0partof your eduCationi 5- prelims and finals, and I gave him a hug and said, 'Nelson, this is your race.' and he said, "I got it."' After Barcelona, Royce came to Michigan. Although he graduated from Peddie in 1991, he deferred his admission to the University for a year in order to train for the Olympics. Royce's first season as a Wolverine saw him help the team to a school-record 788 points in capturing the Big Ten title, and a second-place finish at the NCAA Championships. Individually, he was named Big Ten Freshman of the Year after finishing first in the 200-yard backstroke (Big Ten record 1:42.72) and 200-yard individual medley, as well as second in the 400 IM. At NCAAs, Royce finished third in the 200 back, fourth in the 400 IM and tenth in the 200 IM. After this years' early-season problems, Royce came back and again won the 200 backstroke at Big Tens and finished eighth in the 200 and 400 IMs. However, he was neither rested nor shaved for the meet because he can make NCAA qualifying times without being fully prepared. This strategy will allow him to peak at NCAAs in three weeks, where he' hopes to win the 200 backstroke and set the short-course American record. Sharp would also like to improve in his other events. "My goal is to hopefully set the American record (200 backstroke) short-course so I can have both of them," Sharp said. "I'm only 3.4 seconds from there and I usually drop when I shave. I don't think its out of my line. "I hope we can get our 400 medley relay going and get second or try for first. I want to score higher in my two other events - try to move into finals in the 200 IM and up higher in the 400 IM." Royce's goals, however, do not end with the college season. As Urbanchek likes to say, Royce sets his goals high and is never satisfied. He hopes to win the 1994 World Championships in Rome this summer and then the gold medal in Atlanta in the 200-meter backstroke. He also has Spain's Martin Zubero's world record in the 200 back (1:56.57) as a goal, whether it be now or in the future. "He can definitely be the best backstroker in the world," coach Martin said. However, Royce's greatest achievement may be his victories outside of the water. He turned his life around, and if everything goes according to his plan, people will be seeing this story of overcoming adversity up close and personal, after he wins a gold medal in Atlanta. U U RECORS Aim ArhoiM148104 $2. 000OFF TODAY! All Regular Priced, Full- CD' & Caste Pit 663-5=%0 u r m Ius Mh.-h3l.9 a.m.-m10 pa.m. .11 .XI-8 InS -I"SA- /S Monday March 7th, 1994 Only!. -L1 LL~l I3 1 1 i We're here for YOU this term: * great hours * convienent location * quick turnaround Seasy to use machines * finishing services "* color copies NEW! Ship UPS with us. AVAILABLE @ 12:01 am TONIGHT -- Best Prices In Town H IDNIGHT SALE Open Until 1:00am Tonight! 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