Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a special land where you had to go to get the best in competitive swimming, and in that land a king and his legions held sway.

That land was California, and the throne was controlled first by George Haines and his Santa Clara Swim Club and then by their heir apparent, Mark Schubert and Mission Viejo, with an interregnum at Arden Hills under Sherman Chavoor.

But then the spirit of democracy fell upon the land, and the throne was no more. The bounty and the treasure was spread abroad, and top-notch swim clubs could be found across the country. California no longer holds top-notch swimming completely under its spell, and if you want proof you need look no farther than the Cincinnati Pepsi Marlins overall championship at last July's Outdoor Nationals.

Six of the top ten teams in both the spring and summer Nationals last year came from outside of California, and the percentages in the top five were even better. Even in the number of qualifiers for last summer's U.S. Long Course Swimming Championships the new regional parity was evident.

California's Mission Viejo did send the most qualifiers with 66, but eventual champion Cincinnati sent 45 and the Pepsi Marlins obviously scored better. These two teams had far and away the most entrants, but the next seven were all bunched together with only Concord-Pleasant Hill. Industry Hills, and Santa Clara representing the West Coast. This leaves five of the top nine teams in number of qualifiers from outside of California, and a close look shows that these five represent most of the major regions of the country. Cincinnati carries the banner of the Midwest. Longhorn Aquatics and the Dallas Dr. Pepper team represent the Southwest, Florida Aquatics the Southeast and Starlit the Atlantic Coast.

So competitive swimming in the rest of the country is finally on a par with the best of the West Coast. But why this change in recent years? It seems that everyone has his own theory.

Maybe the California programs are slipping. Maybe the rest of the country is gaining. According to Longhorn Coach Paul Bergen. "In California there are so many good clubs that it splinters the pool of good swimmers." But Nashville Aquatics Coach Ron Young sees this trend in reverse. "In California, with Proposition 13, some of the smaller programs are being forced out financially. Rental on the pools has gone up, and some of the high schools have shut down and their pools along with them."

Whether or not California's talent pool is being diluted, however, the general consensus holds that the secret lies not so much in the West Coast's decline as in the rise of the rest of the country. And both Bergen and Young agree that a large part of this improvement is due to the improved caliber of coaching available in widely scattered areas.

"Coaches are running good programs throughout the United States now," Bergen said. "There are more regionally oriented real good senior programs."

Cincinnati Coach Dennis Pursley also holds to this view. "There are many more coaches now that are good enough to train world-class swimmers," he said recently. And Pursley himself is one of the best examples of this around. Coming to Cincinnati from Louisville's Lakeside club in September, 1979, Pursley guided the Pepsi Marlins to a national championship in less than a year, with what many feel was the best coaching job in the country.

But it takes more than just a great coach to build a top-notch program. A great pool is also an important, though perhaps not essential, asset because it attracts good coaches as well as good swimmers. It is no coincidence that while California had the top teams it also had the only really good year-round swimming facilities.

In addition to these factors, like so many things in life, the success of a swim club often comes down to cash. "A lot of it is the development of the economic context that allows clubs to attract the good swimmers from their areas and the ones nearby," said Starlit Coach Alan Caldwell. "Every year we have to go through the process of going out and trying to round up sponsors." The importance of money lies not only in the day-to-day upkeep of the facility, but in the ability to help top swimmers make the trip to the big meets. Funds set aside for this sort of expenses help to attract top talent because travel expenses is the closest thing to being a professional that even the best swimmer can ever hope for.

Stripped down to the essence of the matter, then, the secret to success in the world of amateur swimming lies in this formula: good coaching plus good funding plus a good facility, and the availability of this combination in new parts of the country had led to the rise of regional clubs able to swim with the best California has to offer.

But is California's magic spell really completely broken? Cincinnati's Pursley doesn't think so: "Given a choice between spending the summer swimming outdoors in California or indoors at Cincinnati's Natatorium, all other things being equal. California still looks pretty attractive.