'Los Al Way' Leads Women to Olympic Medal

Swail, the U.S. captain, grew up in Placentia and is the coach of the new women's water polo program at UC Irvine. Robin Beauregard, a defender, is from Huntington Beach. This trio of Orange Countians welcomed the rest of the team as they gathered in Los Alamitos. They helped the others find apartments, find friends, find restaurants, find the best secret ways to travel Orange County streets.

"I think everybody on our team thinks of Los Alamitos as a little bit of home," Beauregard said. "We were welcomed in the community and never made to feel we were intruding.

"We could train when we needed to. We could have tournaments and people came to see [us]. Do you know how good it felt to have 2,000 fans at the tournament in July?"

All six Olympic teams gathered at Los Al in July. The stands were packed, the cheers loud. Little girls begged for autographs from the players who suddenly were heroes.

"That was wild," Swail said. "And that was just a tiny taste of what the Olympics were like."

Once again Orange County has nurtured female athletes.

Last summer U.S. soccer star Julie Foudy said how lucky she was to have grown up in Mission Viejo, in a place where girls were not just grudgingly accepted as athletes, they were encouraged as athletes.

Swail and Beauregard never had a problem being welcomed on boys' teams when there wasn't a girls' water polo team to join.

" "The fight wasn't getting the chance to play the game when I was growing up," Swail said. "The fight was to play the game in the Olympics."

But in a minute Swail was looking ahead. She is excited about her new program at UC Irvine. And she knows the sport is going forward.

"We've got that great home and new players will be coming to Los Al," Swail said.

"The Los Al way will live on," Baker said. "But these girls will always be the first."

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Diane Pucin can be reached via e-mail at diane.pucin@latimes.com.