Water Sprite

When 16-year-old Sylvia Ruuska arrived in Australia early last month, toting her textbooks to keep up on high school homework, the reception was overwhelming. "Back home I guess that hardly anyone's ever heard of me," she said. "But out here everyone seems to know all about my times and everything. It's fantastic." Sylvia cuddled koalas, toured amusement parks, visited Dancer Fred Astaire on a movie set, but never lost sight of why she had come: to show swim-conscious Australians what an American girl could do. By the time she returned to California this week, Sylvia had set four world records, was no longer an unknown in her own country.

In North Sydney, athletic (5 ft. 8 in., 151 Ibs.) Sylvia thrashed to world butterfly records for 220 yds. and 200 meters in 2:40.3. At the national championships in Hobart, Tasmania, she chased Australia's lisa Konrads so closely in the 880-yd. free style that 14-year-old lisa broke her own world record, explained: 'Syl was on me tail." Last week, at her farewell appearance in Melbourne, versatile Sylvia tackled the individual medley event (requiring backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and free-style laps), set world records at 440 yds. and 400 meters with a 5:41.1 clocking.

Sylvia began to swim competitively when she was seven under the watchful eye of her Finnish-born father, a bear of a man (6 ft., 260 Ibs.) who works as an electrician and doubles as swimming coach for the Berkeley Y.M.C.A. Father Weikko Ruuska drills her incessantly, lumbers up and down the poolside while Sylvia performs, shouting "Giddyap, giddyap!" in a voice that some declare can be heard all the way across San Francisco Bay on clear nights. The Ruuska family practices togetherness. Each morning Mrs. Ruuska drives Sylvia to Berkeley High School on her way to the Y.M.C.A., where she is membership clerk. When overtime work keeps father Ruuska away, his wife takes over his "Y" chores as swimming coach. When the Ruuskas are not coaching Sylvia, they are schooling her younger sister Patricia, 13.

When she is at home, Sylvia works out nearly three hours a day after school, spends six hours daily in the pool on weekends. A natural lefthander, Sylvia has good balance while swimming, favors neither side, breathes from either. Her flat recovery stroke and low position in the water suits her for the longer distances that are her specialty. Sylvia polishes off four full meals a day--breakfast, lunch (meat sandwich), after-school snack (steak sandwich) and dinner (a small steak). She has little interest in boys, does not indulge in teen-age phone chatter, explains, "I do not have the time to waste." Admits Mrs. Ruuska: "We are different from the average family, but we like it."

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