First in a series
Summoned to an urgent meeting with the city 3 days after an unanticipated ruling by the City Council last week had knocked their orderly world sideways, the Chief Operating Officer of the Edge Swim Club, a competitive youth team, was stunned by what she found. Trina Lance said that Parks and Recreation Director Bill LaPointe handed her a voluminous, virtually ready-to-go 12-page document. Leafing through the sheaf of papers, Ms. Lance was struck by the elaborate detail she had presumed would require weeks to assemble and coordinate. Mighty unusual, mighty suspicious, were her first reactions. “How could they have drawn up something so complex so fast?” she wondered. “And without any input from us. Why are they rushing to push this through?” The completed work was replete, she said, with boxes and markings on the pages, suggesting a project long in the works. But hadn’t the City Council’s decision less than 72 hours earlier been a surprise? Ms. Lance asked herself again. What she held in her hand was the product of an astonishingly fast turnaround, she kept saying. The document that was written by Mr. LaPointe defined a complicated new practice plan for sharing The Plunge with an upstart rival, the Royal Swim Team. Ms. Lance was further shocked when Mr. LaPointe informed her the dense plan would go into effect within 6 days, on Wednesday, Nov. 1.
Without detours or frills, let’s go directly to the heart of the story and the Edge’s accusation that Vice Mayor Alan Corlin and Mr. LaPointe are manipulating a vendetta against the team’s colorful founder, Patrick Moran. The team does not believe the smoke and fury that resulted from last week’s Council ruling to be abstract. The team charges that the two city officials are out to create maximum unpleasantry in Mr. Moran’s professional life in response to his immensely forceful personality, which the team says Mr. Corlin and Mr. LaPointe find offensive. The most curious family portrait in Culver City features Ms. Lance, the chief executive of Edge, and Mr. Moran. Some describe them as good cop-bad cop. Committed to her lifetime mission as a peacemaker, the short, delicate, soft-spoken blonde Ms. Lance says, “I hate confrontation.” You have no doubt she means it. At the opposite end of the personality spectrum, Mr. Moran not only may relish confrontation, he brings all of the appropriate equipment to do battle. He is fulltime neon, he is passionate, he is bombastic, he is aggressively outgoing — usually simultaneously. Whether Mr. Moran is barefoot or casually shod (his preference), many who have worked with and against him say it is just in his nature to tread on the toes of others. He believes what he believes with the fullness of his soul and his capacious heart. Tall and athletic with long dark hair trailing in his wake, he is a 35-year-old bolt of dynamite. He only deals in jumbo-sized dosages — of charisma and of erudition. That is a rub that catches many off guard — there is a powerful professorial sheen to Mr. Moran’s unmistakable athletic personality. Children and their parents swear by him, by the magic he creates. It is far too late for anyone in Culver City to be the first to swear at him.
A Profile on the Edge
A measure of public confusion exists over the Edge Swim Club’s dispute with the city about treatment, practice space and practice time, says Ms. Lance. The wider community is not familiar with the true nature of the club, she says. Even when contrasted with other high-powered youth alliances, the 6-year-old Edge Swim Club of Culver City is impressively sophisticated, professionally operated and nationally recognized, a unique combination. For Culver City, Edge is pretty big, serving more than 200 boys and girls from 7 years old to college-age. Boasting that it never has turned away a child, the Edge, emphasizing individual attention, has two equally weighted objectives. One is to develop the student’s athletic skills. The other is to build the confidence and fitness of each child to his capacity. “Building character, building good persons, good citizens is what we are about,” says the founder Mr. Moran. Edge is as different from Royal, say Edge leaders, as a dog is from a cat. Yes, both animals have 4 legs, but there the resemblance ends. Edge and Royal, say Edge people, are both competitive swim teams, but there the resemblance stops. Royal, they say, is “just a swim team” that already practices in three far flung pools from near Beverly Hills to the far west end of the Valley. By comparison, only 5 of the 49 Royal swimmers are from Culver City. The majority of Edge swimmers live here, and the rest are from nearby neighborhoods. Nearly everything about the two competitive swim teams is vastly different, says Mr. Moran. “This is what makes the idea of sharing The Plunge so ludicrous. If you understand the great differences between the two teams, it should be easy to see that sharing the pool is not logical.” Others say the present scheme is like a football team and a baseball team practicing side-by-side.
Next: Going inside the high-spirited culture of the Edge Swim Club.
