American swimming is facing an un-American dilemma. According to USA Swimming, the sport's national governing body, 40 percent of swimming medalists at the Athens Summer Games had ties to NCAA institutions -- and most were not donning gold, silver and bronze for the red, white and blue.

Some people who are concerned about that cast a glance at the collegiate level -- where more than one-third of the point scorers at last year's NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving Championships were foreign-born competitors -- and see a connection.

While such diversity is the purported "American way," there are some in the swimming community who worry that the proliferation of international student-athletes eats into scholarship opportunities for American swimmers and thus diminishes the talent pool for the U.S. Olympic teams. They also believe that American colleges and universities end up training and coaching international student-athletes who then go home and win Olympic medals for competing teams.

Point: If Division I programs are to be the Olympic feeder system that many people expect them to be, then training potential competitors is not in their best interests.

But, as many Division I coaches articulate, since their jobs are predicated on the strength of their programs, they are obliged to recruit the fastest swimmers, which in many cases come from the international pool. Coaches note better skills, a higher work ethic and a greater appreciation for the opportunity to compete as common among international prospects.

Counterpoint: If Division I programs are to be the NCAA championship teams many expect them to be, then training potential champions -- regardless of national pedigree -- is in their best interests.

That push and pull between campus and country is not uncharted wa ter. Some people believe NCAA swimming owes more loyalty to the Olympic cause than others do. USA Swimming Executive Director Chuck Wielgus is familiar with both sides. As a person with a stake in the success of the American Olympic teams, he is keenly aware of the ramifications of a high international swimming population at the collegiate level. But as a leader who also is in touch with the college coaching constituency, he understands their dilemma as well.

"There is a general feeling that many of the international prospects are more mature and more serious about their studies, and they bring a dynamic to a team environment, to an athletics department, to a school, that can have broadening experiences for others," Wielgus said. "On the other side is the view that there are sports federations in other countries that look to NCAA institutions as a means to get their top athletes better coaching and a higher level of competition, and who use the NCAA system to develop Olympic athletes much more efficiently and affordably than they could in their own country."

Wielgus acknowledged that this is a sensitive issue. He said he is in no way suggesting that American colleges and universities should stop accepting international swimmers as members of their teams to further the U.S. Olympic cause. He also is quick to point out that his organization, USA Swimming, does not have a formal position on the matter. But he does believe, at least personally, that the issue is worth taking seriously.

"Seventeen of the medals won in Athens were won by foreign athletes with NCAA experience," he said. "One of the men's relay teams from South Africa that won the gold had three NCAA athletes. When that sort of thing happens and you look to see what factors we have to overcome to maximize our performance in international competition, certainly the fact that so many foreign athletes are training in the U.S. is one of those factors."

Wielgus said one of the concepts being discussed is to encourage some sort of cap on the scholarship dollars that can be allocated to international student-athletes. Though some people question the ethics or even the legality of such an approach, Wielgus said the practice is not unprecedented. In basketball, for instance, he said that for decades foreign club teams were allowed to have up to two "imports" per team. More often than not, Wielgus said, those imports were Americans, and usually the team's best players. He said part of the reasoning for the international basketball leagues to allow American players to play was to raise the local level of competition.

For a lot of American players, Wielgus said, that created wonderful opportunities to travel overseas and earn a living doing what they liked, but the byproduct was that they helped to advance the game.

"So the scholarship cap is not a unique concept," he said. "The idea is not to say that foreign athletes are bad or that they cannot receive scholarship money, but to put some sort of a governor on a school's ability to load up its team with foreign athletes. I think that might be a reasonable discussion to advance."

Coach people, not countries

But some say such an approach is problematic even if they like the idea. John Leonard, the executive director of the American Swimming Coaches Association, said there is no way to mandate to a private school with a significant number of international students that they can't compete in NCAA competition.

"If I'm a private institution, I'll be darned if I let anyone tell me who I can let into my program," he said. "On the other hand, if I'm an American parent paying tax dollars and I'm looking at a state university giving aid to an athlete from Zimbabwe, I might have a problem with that."

Eddie Reese, men's swimming coach at the University of Texas at Austin, who said he does not "go out of his way" to recruit international student-athletes, acknowledged that the practice would be difficult to curb. "If an international student-athlete comes to your school, it's another opportunity to help someone get an education, so you do it and you do the best you can," he said. "(But to actively recruit them), that's something each coach has to resolve to take care of his or her program."

Some coaches have resolved the issue by saying that pitting American prospects against the international athletes only makes the home-grown kids better. University of Southern California swim coach Mark Schubert, who also has coached teams at the last seven Olympiads, said that's been his experience.

"And the thing that I'm proud of is that a lot of the international students who have come to USC and have competed on our teams are now Americans -- as my grandfather and your grandfather became Americans," he said.

Schubert said he cites the example of an athlete he coached, Lenny Krayzelburg, to counter the argument that American colleges and universities are training other people's Olympians. Krayzelburg came to Southern California as a Ukrainian citizen who became an American and won four gold medals in two Olympics for the United States.

"I'm glad the NCAA takes a more global view of this rather than a parochial view as I think a lot of people do," Schubert said. "The American dream is the opportunity for outstanding people to come to our country and contribute to our society. The NCAA is a microcosm of that and our universities obviously provide that kind of a situation. A lot of outstanding student-athletes come here, they love our country, they stay and they contribute."

University of Arizona coach Frank Busch said it's OK even if they contribute to the Olympic cause for other countries. He coached the three South African relay winners, and he said it is premature for people who don't know them very well to assume that those athletes are somehow disloyal or disingenuous.

"That was the first gold medal for a swimming individual or relay in the history of their country," Busch said. "Those three men have been as loyal to me as anyone I've ever coached. That should be what the Olympics are all about, but unfortunately that's changed over the years because of the pressure on countries to do better than others.

"If you look at it from the black-and-white perspective that it takes scholarships away from someone else, that might be true, just as it is true that my offering a scholarship to a swimmer from Utah takes away from scholarships available for swimmers from Arizona. You can argue that it's us vs. them, but I don't look at it that way. I coach people; I don't coach countries."

In that sense, Busch said, there's no need for coaches to have to reconcile whether they owe a responsibility to the bigger national picture.

"You have different loyalties in your life," he said. "They can be to your family, to your church, to your community and to your country. I have loyalties to the University of Arizona and to USA Swimming, and neither of those is threatened by whether I coach someone from Arizona, Utah or South Africa. Our job as coaches is to do the very best we can within the confines of our programs and abide by NCAA rules and regulations. When you're in the avocation of improving student-athletes, it doesn't matter where they're from."

Increase funding

Wielgus said he understands that argument, especially in the case of an international student-athlete who has pursued the opportunity. But he wonders whether college coaches should be working as hard as they do to lure those athletes across the border.

"Again, there's nothing wrong with a foreign athlete coming to this country and paying full tuition and walking onto a team, but we want to have more scholarship money for American athletes," he said.

University of Florida coach Gregg Troy said the proliferation of international student-athletes might not be an issue at all if men's collegiate swimming had more than 9.9 scholarships at its disposal. Rather than cap allocations, Troy believes the NCAA should consider raising the level at which schools can fund the sport.

He said scholarships are important to men's swimming in particular because it is the primary impetus in many cases to keep prospects in the sport. But if there aren't enough scholarships to go around, or if those scholarships aren't full grants-in-aid, then some prospects may seek their educational opportunities in other sports.

Further complicating the supply and demand, Troy said, is that to field a team of 18, after factoring in injuries and allocating for divers, if teams don't carry 22 or 24 athletes they may run the risk of not having enough to be nationally competitive. "If you look at the recent history of the NCAAs, the teams that are winning are scoring 18 people or close to it," he said. "So 9.9 doesn't make it."

He said it's not as much of an issue in women's swimming, which can fund up to 14 scholarships. Troy said 14 can stretch to 18 much more easily than 9.9 can. That means coaches who want to field competitive men's teams need their freshman to be able to score at the NCAA meet. And because the supply of American prospects who can do that isn't enough to fill the demand, coaches are prompted to look elsewhere, including overseas.

Some coaches say the international student-athletes also are more appreciative of the partial scholarship than the American prospect who is either desiring or expecting a full ride. Others counter, though, that the reason the international swimmer is comfortable with the equivalency is because his home country may be footing the rest of the bill through payments to the prospect's parents. Though that practice may be hard to prove, there may be enough anecdotal evidence to support the occurrence.

Wielgus, who has voiced his concerns to the NCAA Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving Committee and to other groups, said he understands that his personal expectations may be somewhat unrealistic. He emphasized, though, that from an international perspective, which he believes is every bit as important as the local perspective, the challenge is real.

"From a selfish, narrow, USA Swimming-how-do-we-do-in-international-competition perspective, there's reason to be concerned," he said. "For purely selfish reasons, I would love to see 100 percent of scholarship money go to American kids. I think, though, that the most realistic approach would be to recognize the value of diversity in athletics, yet have some sort of governor on how much scholarship money could be allocated to foreign athletes.

"Strategically, that's where I would come out on it."