Baylor swimming coach Dan Flack has an idea what college football coaches such as LSU’s Les Miles and Ohio State’s Jim Tressel go through before the final BCS standings are released.

Only Flack is having to wait many more weeks instead of a few more days or hours.

Flack’s Aqua Raiders captured Tennessee and Eastern Prep championships last month and now seek Swimming World magazine’s national championship. The magazine compiles times from every state meet and ranks programs based on their times, but the issue crowning the top high school doesn’t come out until the summer.

Pennsylvania holds its state meet later this month, and swimming is a spring sport in California, so Flack and his swimmers must practice patience.

“That’s kind of where we are,” he said. “In the independent school division, I think we’re going to win it. I feel pretty good about that, but I don’t want to hex myself because there is one team in California, Bellarmine Prep around the San Jose area, that is very powerful.

“As for the combined public and private division, that’s too close to call.”

Flack admits he’s obsessed with the opportunity, maintaining his own tally board in his office overlooking Baylor’s 50-meter indoor pool that was completed in October 2004 at a price tag of roughly $4 million. The Aqua Raiders were No. 2 nationally in Swimming World’s rankings of independent schools in 1979 and 1980, when Jim Stover was coach.

Baylor’s recent title at the Easterns in Philadelphia was its first since ’80.

“Winning a national championship would be a huge statement to the commitment of the parents and the school, who got this facility built,” Flack said, “and it’s a huge statement for the kids and believing a dream. I thought at some point we could do this, but for it to possibly happen so soon is a real testament to the hard work everybody has put in. It would be a major feather in our cap.”

And a major turnaround, because in February 2005, Baylor concluded a multiyear slide with a 14th-place state finish.

“The program was dying in the old pool. There is no doubt about it,” said Roger Vredeveld, a former All-American and coach at the school. “It was three-and-a-half feet deep, so we had to take our regular-sized starting blocks, cut them down and then a few years ago had to take them out completely. We never had an accident here, but I think there were some people diving in shallow water injured elsewhere, and there were insurance claims.

“In the last two years of the old pool, we had no meets at all.”

No matter where Baylor’s boys finish in the Swimming World rankings — they were seventh among independent schools last year — Vredeveld believes this is the best team in school history. He was a senior in 1979, when the Aqua Raiders finished second at the Easterns despite scoring more points than the 1980 champs.

The ’79 Aqua Raiders might be the top athletic team in Chattanooga-area history from a college scholarship standpoint, as Vredeveld signed with North Carolina, Tom Brigham with Purdue, Martin Boles with Tulane, Ed Jolley with Clemson, Geoff Gaberino with Florida, David Whelchel with Nebraska, Chip McElhattan with Clemson, Mitchell Poole with Brown, Jeff Christiansen with Clemson, Kevin Hiscock with North Carolina and Bobby Laugherty with Florida. Vredeveld, Brigham, Boles and Jolley were seniors that year.

“Just comparing times from the ’79 team to times of this year’s team, this year’s team would beat the ’79 team hands down and the ’80 team, too,” Vredeveld said. “I was our top backstroker in ’79 and David Whelchel was our top backstroker in ’80, and even if we were allowed to do the backstroke turn they have now, neither of us could have done what Reese Shirey did this year, because he was 50 seconds flat.

“Gaberino’s 200 free is still the school record, so that would have won, but the rest would depend on how the lineups were done. Our team from ’79 might have won the IM, but we didn’t load up on that event this year at the state meet. This year’s team would win all three relays.”

This year’s team broke six school records, including the 400 free relay from 1979. Gaberino, Brigham, Boles and Vredeveld set a national prep record at 3:06.82, but Shirey, Matt Limerick, Nathan Vredeveld and Brad Hamilton went 3:06.52 last month for a new school standard.

Nathan is Roger’s son.

“That record had been there too long,” Roger said. “It is nice that when they change those names up there on the record board, they just have to change the first initial.”

Said Nathan: “It has been exciting for me and for him. He was very excited I got to break it, but it was the whole relay that did it.”

Hamilton has emerged as Baylor’s most dominant swimmer of this era, winning two state freestyle titles last year and recently winning butterfly and breaststroke titles in Philadelphia. He has been fantastic, Vredeveld said, but Gaberino remains the most dominant in program history.

Gaberino went on to lead Florida to NCAA titles in 1983 and 1984 and won a gold medal in the 800-meter free relay at the 1984 Olympics.

“He is still the best, but this team now is better,” Vredeveld said. “I always wanted the same experience for my children. I just can’t believe it happened so fast.”