Date: Fri 08-Dec-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Illustration: I

Quick Words:

Kim-Column-Swim

Full Text:

Kim Harmon/On Sports: Diamonds In The Rough

It has happened every year now for three years. One might get the idea that

Newtown High School swim coach Brian Reiff walks around with some good-luck

talisman in his pocket - a four-leaf clover, a rabbit's foot, a lucky penny or

an Indian's-head nickel - or maybe has a monkey's paw someplace where he walks

in the Shadow.

Every year, for three years now, coach Reiff has found a diamond in the rough

- right when he needed it the most.

Two years ago it was a fellow by the name of Terry McGovern, a cross-country

and track star who decided to try out for the swim team and quickly became one

of the premier butterfliers in the now-defunct Western Connecticut Conference.

Last year it was a guy by the name of Kyle Trocolla. With the graduation of

Sean Martins, the Indians' diving prospects were virtually non-existent, until

Trocolla stepped in and said he would try it. He not only tried it, but became

quite good at it.

This year, the diamond in the rough is ninth-grader Kyle McCullough.

McCullough would have been bouncing basketballs this winter, except coach

Reiff caught a glimpse of him diving during the summer and convinced the kid

to join his team. McCullough, with a lifetime of trampoline acrobatics, has

the natural ability to become one of the top divers in the new South-West

Conference . . . as a freshman.

Diamonds in the rough.

You know, coaches must dream about this stuff - finding that quarterback with

the shotgun arm, that basketball player who can rain threes in his sleep, the

pitcher with the Lord Charles curve ball.

And maybe a coach gets one of those players every five or six years.

But coach Reiff has gotten three in three years.

I haven't seen many of these kinds of athletes pop up in my 10 years on the

beat. I've seen some great players up in Watertown, guys like Rico Brogna, who

have passed through the system but I don't think I have seen any who have

suddenly popped up and transformed a team.

Brogna almost fits the bill, having transferred from Taft School to Watertown

High School in his freshman year, but the praises of that young man were being

sung back when he was seven years old in Little League and a guy with that

much ability and that much advanced publicity does not pop up.

But he did bring the Watertown High School football team to a state

championship and the baseball team to a conference title.

Rico was like the Hope diamond in the rough.

The thing about these diamonds, though, some might prove to be a little cloudy

or have poor cuts or simply be cubic zirconium. I have been around a couple

coaches in the past who have plucked what they thought to be diamonds out of

the charcoal and all they proved to be were fool's gold.

Terry McGovern wasn't made of glass. Not after he gave such life to the swim

team. Kyle Trocolla wasn't made of glass, either. He took over a diving

program that probably would not have existed had he not climbed on top of that

board. And from what is being said about this young man, Kyle McCullough, he

isn't made of glass. He is a pure cut.

This is what makes sports exciting.

Finding those diamonds in the rough.