The greater thrill, he's since learned, is discovering what lies beneath it.

Ogoreuc, a distinguished swimmer at Indiana High School and Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the 1980s, recently retired as head coach at Slippery Rock, despite nearing a milestone. Only seven more victories and he would have eclipsed Jim Egli's school record for coaching wins in the sport.

But the siren call of the Commodore Project proved impossible to resist.

By turning in his whistle at the age of 36, Ogoreuc now has more time to pursue various aquatic projects, especially ones that take him into the deep. He's particularly fascinated by the wreck of the Commodore, a 19th-century steamer that rests on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Its demise was chronicled by author Stephen Crane - best known for his Civil War classic The Red Badge of Courage - in a short story, "The Open Boat."

"It's hard to give up coaching, but I just had too many projects. Something had to give," says Ogoreuc, who fashioned a 101-55-1 record in his 12 seasons as men's and women's swimming coach at Slippery Rock. "I couldn't pass up something like the Commodore Project, where we do underwater mapping and archaeological work. To be involved with something like that is pretty special. It's the opportunity of a lifetime."

Ogoreuc is no stranger to diving into the deep. He has also visited the site where the Spanish galleon Amarate went down off the Florida Keys in the 1700s, and he's explored century-old wrecks in Lake Erie. But the Commodore is especially intriguing, given its historical significance - e.g., the link with Crane, who was aboard as a passenger when it sank in 1897, claiming eight lives.

Crane and three other survivors clambered into a 10-foot dinghy after the ship foundered in rough seas. By following the beacon of the lighthouse at Ponce de Leon Inlet, they safely reached shore after an arduous 30-hour journey. Coincidentally, the lighthouse serves as the headquarters for the Commodore Project.

"When I got asked to do this, one of the things that I wanted to do was read 'The Open Boat' and read about when the Commodore went down and who all was on it - get the historical background," says Ogoreuc, a four-time All-Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference selection at IUP (1986-89). "The ship was built in 1882, in Philadelphia. It sank Jan. 2, 1897, under mysterious circumstances. It was stormy, but I guess there's still a question about what actually led to the sinking of it. The thing is, it was a filibuster. Filibusters were gun-running ships that traveled to Cuba just before and during the Spanish-American War. The Commodore went down with 15 tons of munitions, half a ton of dynamite, 40 bundles of Remington rifles, a number of Mauser and Winchester rifles, 200,000 rifle cartridges and about a thousand cannon rounds. All these things were being taken to Cuba."

But the Commodore never reached its destination. The wreck rests in 75 feet of water off Florida's Atlantic coast, about 15 miles east of Daytona Beach.

The Commodore Project is one of several expeditions sponsored by the Cambrian Foundation, which is, according to its Web site, "dedicated to the research, education, preservation and exploration of the aquatic realm." The foundation has also explored, among others, the wrecks of the Civil War ironclad Monitor and the ore-hauling ship Edmund Fitzgerald, which went down in Lake Superior in 1975 and was celebrated in song by Gordon Lightfoot.

The first Cambrian Foundation exploration of the Commodore took place in April 2002, with Ogoreuc among a dozen divers who participated. They mapped the wreck while working among schools of barracuda and flounder, with occasional visits by curious stingrays and sharks. There isn't much left of the Commodore, which measured 123 feet in length and 19 feet across the beam.

"It was a wooden ship, so obviously time has taken a toll," Ogoreuc says. "You don't see any wooden beams or anything like that. Basically what we found was the propeller, the drive shaft, the boiler, if you will, and some debris, like bullets and casings."

The divers' work centered on mapping the remains.

"Two-man teams would take a clipboard down that had a kind of special paper, grid paper, and we divided the wreck into sections," Ogoreuc explains. "Then you had the tedious task of mapping anything you found of significance in each of those sections. And the key to it is, you're doing all this - trying to do measurements and trying to draw - while trying to stay off the bottom so you keep from stirring things up."

At the end of each day, the divers would return to the lighthouse drafting room and transfer the information they'd marked on their underwater slates onto a large map. The mapping project is still to be completed.

Ogoreuc was hand-picked for the diving team on the basis of his extensive experience as a scientific diver. For example, he previously explored the site where the galleon Amarate went down in the Straits of Florida between the Keys and Cuba. Ogoreuc found cannon balls and piles of ballast stones - they were arranged in a ship's hold to provide stability and the proper draft - but no other evidence that a vessel once rested there exists. The wrecks he's explored in Lake Erie are, in contrast, well preserved.

"A lot of the wrecks up there kind of sunk right around the same time - turn of the century," he says. "The neat thing about wreck diving Lake Erie is that those wooden ships are in fresh water and we're diving to about 130 feet, in that range. So a lot of those wooden ships are still preserved because you don't have the salt water and the water in Lake Erie is obviously a lot colder at that depth. You see some pristine wrecks - wooden arches and some wooden masts, versus the Commodore, which basically is just remnants of the propeller and other metal stuff."

It was the lure of the Commodore, among other things, that led Ogoreuc to resign his coaching post. That's not to suggest he's adopted a leisurely lifestyle. In fact, Ogoreuc is busier than ever. He still works as an assistant professor of physical education at Slippery Rock and as director of the school's aquatics facility. Ogoreuc also edits and revises swimming and water safety textbooks and videos for the American Red Cross; serves as a training officer for the Ocean City (N.J.) Beach Patrol; and works with the United States Life-Saving Association, writing training materials and instruction manuals. He has also written a course of study for YMCA scuba programs.

Ogoreuc even officiated this summer at the famed South Jersey Lifeguard Championships, where one of the winners, in the doubles row competition, was fellow Indiana native and IUP grad Scott "Bick" Murphy. That achievement was noted in the Aug. 18 issue of Sports Illustrated.

Yes, Ogoreuc is tackling the kind of frenetic schedule few would associate with a retiree, but still he longs for more. Ogoreuc can't wait to return to the Commodore when the project resumes. For he's discovered that the satisfaction of setting records atop the water can't compare to the thrill of exploring beneath it.