‘New Wave’ Preparing to Surface : Swimming: Stelle hopes to join flow of emerging leaders during the national championships.

The future of American swimming will be unveiled this week in the U.S. national championships at Mission Viejo.

Westlake Village’s Jason Stelle hopes to become part of that high-class group.

“I want to help bring in the new wave of the future,” he said. “At this meet, we’ll see who it’s going to be.”

Stelle, a sophomore-to-be at USC, expects to drop a second off his 100-meter backstroke time (57 seconds) and two seconds off his 200 backstroke mark (2:03.00). He also wants to improve on his best national finishes, seventh place in the 100 and eighth in the 200 in last summer’s nationals in Florida.

“My body feels good and my mind is in focus,” Stelle said. “Hopefully, everything will fall into place.”

Stelle also hopes to make a favorable impression on Mark Schubert, who recently replaced the retired Peter Daland as USC swimming coach.

“I want to go into the college season with some confidence,” he said.

Several other swimmers could say the same, including Harvard-bound Ben Swartout of Buenaventura Swim Club and Cal State Northridge-bound Heather Ballard of the Glendale YMCA.

Along with Stelle, they are among 18 Valley-area swimmers who qualified for the national championships.

In addition to Ballard, Glendale YMCA is represented by: Liah Kim, 12; Jennifer Abbey, 13; Gretchen Ballard, 13; Ashley Flanagan, 14, and Cori Miller, 17.

Buenaventura’s entrants, along with Swartout, include: Mandy Walz, 15; Ryan Duncan, 18; Joel Gustafson, 17; Ben Pecht, 17, and Chris Pelant, 16.

Jamie Callahan, 16, and Valery Calkins, 17, qualified from Conejo Simi Aquatics.

Sprinter Lindsay Gassner, 16, is the lone qualifier from Canyons Aquatics and Kristine Quance and Alexis Larsen will represent CLASS Aquatics of Calabasas.

This is Quance’s first major competition since March when, beset by mononucleosis, she missed making the Olympic team by one place.

Although Quance, 17, of Northridge, has recovered, she missed too much training to have a realistic chance of reaching her goal--swimming her specialty, the 200 breaststroke, as fast as the medalists in the Barcelona Games.

The competition will begin Monday at 4 p.m.