1988 THE YEAR IN REVIEW : Evans Wins Fame, Passes Up Fortune : Triple Gold Medalist from Placentia Rates as Orange County's Top Story

By STEVE LOWERY

Jan. 1, 1989 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

We want Janet.

We want Janet shampoo (She cleaned up at Seoul , now she wants to clean up your scalp ), we want Janet toothpaste (She’ll do to your plaque what she did to the East Germans) and we want Janet Cliff Notes (When gold medals get in the way of The Great Gatsby) . We want Janet-Jammies, we want JANET-LAND and yes, we want our JTV.

We want Janet Evans in our newspapers and magazines, on our coffee tables and television screens. We want Janet because she’s the best, the brightest and because she giggles after she wins Olympic gold medals, sets swimming world records or eats pizza.

We want Janet Evans so badly that when she returned home to Placentia after winning three gold medals (400-meter individual medley, 400- and 800-freestyle) during the Seoul Summer Olympics, we practically chased her back to South Korea.

Television cameras, still photographers, newspaper reporters, magazine writers, TV personalities. And that was just Day 1. Taking in the crush of media-types onto Placentia’s El Dorado High School, where Evans is a senior and reigning homecoming queen, classmate Shane Borowski said, “We all feel sorry for her. I mean, look at that.”

Evans claimed she wanted to be “Just Janet,” but her commercial value has been assessed in mega-bucks. Still, she’s balked at signing professional endorsements, choosing to search for a semblance of a normal life.

Good luck. At age 17, Janet Evans was Orange County’s top sports story of 1988. The 105-pound girl from Placentia was bigger than the play-dead Angels and their amazing revolving managers (Mauch-to-Cookie-to-Moose-to-Rader).

Bigger than the Rams, whose Super Bowl hopes got as far as a wild-card game in Minnesota. That’s where they lost under climatic conditions usually reserved for better shops and department stores.

She made a bigger splash than Lynne Cox, who swam a Russian lake in search of a different kind of medal. (What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?) She was a bigger hit than Angel catcher Bob Boone, who had his best year batting and then bolted the Angels for the Kansas City Royals for just one dollar more than he earned with the Angels in 1988.

Evans headed an amazing army of Orange County athletes under 21 years of age who showed up their elders during the year. Placentia’s Michael Chang, 16, became the youngest male to win a singles match at Wimbledon and went on to become, along with Andre Agassi, the next great hope for American tennis.

Placentia’s Michele Granger, 18, now a freshman at California, was recognized as the world’s greatest softball pitcher, setting a dizzying array of national softball pitching records while at Valencia High.

There was Servite High’s Derek Brown, 17, who set the county single-season rushing record and University of Houston running back Chuck Weatherspoon, 20, a La Habra High alumnus who rushed for 1,005 yards and led the nation in yards per carry (8.5).

There were Elaine Youngs (El Toro), Jenny Evans (Newport Harbor) and Laurie Jones (Huntington Beach) who, as freshmen, played major roles on the UCLA women’s volleyball team that went 34-0 before losing in the semifinals of the NCAA championships. Bob Hamelin, at age 20, batted .514 for Rancho Santiago College and hit a state-record 31 home runs and 105 RBIs in 48 games.

The Mater Dei boys’ basketball team won its fourth consecutive 5-A championship despite recruiting allegations made against its athletic programs and the team’s failure to win the league title.

Corona del Mar High, with an enrollment of only 1,400, won Southern Section championships in girls’ track, girls’ tennis, water polo, football and a state championship in boys’ cross-country.

The Irvine High girls’ volleyball team won its second straight state championship.

The grownups’ table--filled with resignations, firings, disappointment and guys named Moose--did have some bright spots.

Greg Louganis of the Mission Viejo Nadadores became the first male to sweep gold medals in diving in two Olympics. Newport Harbor’s Greg Barton won two gold medals in kayaking during the Summer Olympics, becoming the first American to win a gold medal in singles kayaking. The Rams’ Jim Everett set team single-season records for pass completions, yards and touchdowns. Receiver Henry Ellard set a season record for receptions. The Angels’ Johnny Ray was an All-Star.

But overall, it was the kids who were more than all right in 1988. And leading the way were . . .

NOT JUST JANET ANYMORE

Dr. John Troup, director of U.S. Swimming Inc., had tested more than 1,000 swimmers for energy efficiency when he came across Janet Evans. After testing her prior to the Summer Games, he proclaimed Evans the most energy efficient “male or female” swimmer today.

“I’ll stop short of saying Janet’s a fish,” said Troup, in a Sports Illustrated article, “but physiologically she’s very similar.”

Whatever she was, she was like nothing most people had ever seen--three gold medals and one world record in events long dominated by women with thick shoulders.

She tore through the Olympic pool with a slapping stroke that, above water, looked like the last desperate plea of a drowning victim.

Experts told us what happens above the water doesn’t matter, it’s what happens below, and below the water, they said, Janet Evans was perfect.

Three gold medals made that easy to figure. But what seemed to endear Evans to the American public was what happened above the water: the block-long smile, the giggles, the absolute absence of pretense.

She became insta-star, America’s kid sister. Swimmer Matt Biondi won more gold medals (5), sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner was more awesome to watch, Carl Lewis and Greg Louganis might have proven themselves the nation’s greatest Olympians, but no American came back from Seoul more adored than Janet Evans.

She walked off a plane and in front of a television camera. Make that cameras. Returning to Placentia, the Evans’ family car passed under banners thanking Janet, lawns drafting her (“Janet For Mayor,” the placards read) and home to a block party attended by 500 close friends, well-wishers, strangers, gawkers and minicams.

Her first day back at school was no less hectic: battalions of reporters and photographers descending upon El Dorado High.

She appeared with rich man, Johnny Carson of The Tonight Show, and Poorman, on KROQ radio with deejay The Poorman, and received an invitation to the White House from The Man.

She rode in the Disneyland Parade, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and was grand marshal of the Placentia Heritage Days Parade.

Naively, she observed, “I’ve never come from a meet and had anything like this happen.”

Looking back with several months of perspective, she revised, “I guess I should have realized that it was the Olympics.”

She said that sitting in a hotel room in Phoenix, the day before she was to be grand marshal of the Fiesta Day Parade. She has been the toast at banquets, luncheons and award presentations. But she has refused to sign any endorsement deals.

Though the media demand for her is much less frenzied, “it’s died down a lot,” it is still constant--there are a couple national magazine covers planned for her for early 1989. There are more than a few companies that would love to have her on their side of the debit column. But no. One call to Biondi, who did sign the endorsement deals, persuaded her.

“He told me he didn’t have a home, that he just lived from hotel room to hotel room, ‘just going where they tell me to,’ ” Evans said. “We talked to them (companies) and they said I could make a lot of money but it would be a full-time job, that I would be so busy that I wouldn’t be able to finish high school.

“I know if I did it, I could be set for life, but finishing high school is very important to me, so I said no.”

And then she probably smiled.

THREE IN A FISHBOWL

Michael Chang stepped into 1988 already having the distinction of being the youngest male tennis player to win the U.S. Tennis Assn. national 18-and-under singles title and the youngest to win a singles match at the U.S. Open.

In 1988, at 16, he became the youngest to win a singles match at Wimbledon. He advanced to the U.S. Open’s fourth round this year before being eliminated by the 18-year-old Agassi.

With the best tennis players in the world now residing in West Germany and Sweden, Chang and Agassi’s coming of age signaled hope for American men’s tennis, which has been mired in post-Jimbo/Big Mac depression.

Like Agassi, Chang hits the ball with amazing velocity and moves his body just about as fast. Pancho Segura compared him to a young Ken Rosewall.

France’s Henry LeConte succinctly summed up Chang’s past, present and future when he said, “He moves so quickly with such good timing. I’m thinking, ‘Sixteen years old?’ God.”

Michele Granger did everything in 1988 to confirm that she is the best softball pitcher in the world. She ended her high school career at Valencia holding national records for single-season strikeouts, career strikeouts, career no-hitters and tied the mark for single-season no-hitters.

But while she has won numerous national and international titles--including a gold medal during the 1987 Pan American Games--she failed to win a Southern Section championship in her 4 years at Valencia High. Her high school career came to a bizarre end during a 25-inning, 3-A semifinal game against La Mirada that took 2 days to play.

Valencia had 10 hits in the game but failed to score. The Tigers also made 9 errors, 3 of which led to La Mirada’s 1 run and the victory. Granger struck out 40 in the game and afterward, in, perhaps, 1988’s greatest overstatement said, “I let my team down.”

Derek Brown came into 1988 having performed well in 2 varsity seasons as the starting tailback for arguably Orange County’s highest-profile football program--Servite High in Anaheim. But he played in the long shadow cast by Crespi High’s Russell White, who came into this year a two-time winner of the large-school division’s most valuable player award.

White began the season with the publicity, but Brown eventually made the season his own. In a memorable October meeting between the two backs, Brown outgained White 312 yards to 81 as Servite won the game 35-20.

Brown went on to lead the Southern Section in rushing and set an Orange County single-season rushing record with 2,301 yards. He and Fountain Valley quarterback David Henigan were named co-Division 1 most valuable players.

When it was clear that Brown was having a better season than White, the Crespi back quipped, “He better remember who was the originator and who is the imitator.”

By year’s end, Derek Brown and the rest of Orange County’s kid wonders made certain they’d be remembered for quite a while.