The El Toro Aquatics Boosters group was started in 1982 by Tom Trollan, whose son, Vince, was the first El Toro grad to attend and graduate from West Point. Tom spearheaded the booster group and invested a lot of his own money in the form of the water polo scholarships for the first 12 years. As our first president, he gave $1000.00 to $1500.00 per year to the most deserving aquatics athlete with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. Originally the athlete had to letter in both water polo and swimming and maintain a minumum 3.5 GPA. In 1995, Tom and his wife Marion moved to Temecula and the booster group at that time decided to continue the Scholar-athlete program with some modifications.
Todays current booster group uses these modifications to aid in the selection of the athletes for the Aquatics scholarships. Currently, up to four scholarships are given. The athlete's family must be a booster member for the athlete to qualify for a scholarship.
The current system of earning credits for your account was thought up and put into motion by Coach Tilton's dad, Butch. He noticed that 10 per cent of the people did 100% of the work and everybody benefitted, so to get more involvement he put in the system we have today where families build up an account they can use to defray the increasing costs of having a child in Aquatics. Butch was also one of our finest presidents and had many good ideas including the work detail we have during Hellweek. Because of his efforts, the Aquatics booster club is one that everybody tries to imitate, not only on this campus, but other schools as well.