More than 800 swimmers from 30 different club teams descended upon California Lutheran University last week for the 2014 Southern California Swimming Junior Olympic Championships.
Before capacity crowds at the Samuelson Aquatics Center in Thousand Oaks, Malibu High’s Logan Hotchkiss and Farah Stack made the Malibu Seawolves Swim Club proud.
Hotchkiss, 17, placed second in three different events and fifth in his other race for the boys’ 15-and-over age group. Stack took 12th and 18th overall in her respective races in the girls’ 15-and-over division.
“They are both talented swimmers. Logan did great. He has been putting in consistent work and I’ve seen him improve quite a bit. Logan gave it his best and he had nothing left at the end,” Malibu coach Mike Alexandrov said. “Farah has a lot of potential too. If she sticks with consistency, she will see a lot of great results. She’s a steady swimmer.”
With many of the area’s best swimmers participating during the five-day “splashathon,” Hotchkiss continued to excel at the highest level. He began the meet competing in rare back-to-back championship heats after qualifying in prelims.
In the 100-meter freestyle, Hotchkiss swam a time of 53.78 seconds, finishing second (.07 seconds behind the winner). The finish also marked a 2-second improvement from his previous best mark. Ten minutes later, he remarkably swam the 800-meter freestyle in a time of 8:47.00, placing second again.
Despite swimming in consecutive races, Hotchkiss was able to improve his personal best by more than 5 seconds in the 800.
“Logan showed a lot of character,” Alexandrov said. “I was really impressed that he was able to mentally stay in it. It takes a lot of power and mental energy to do back-to-back.”
Hotchkiss’ success continued with a time of 1:57.50 in the 200-meter freestyle final, taking second place for a third time in less than 24 hours. He improved by more than 3 seconds.
Fatigue finally caught up with Hotchkiss as he finished fifth in the 400-meter freestyle, despite dropping a second off his best time (4:13.23).
“He’s been dropping so much time since I’ve been working with him,” Alexandrov said. “Each year he has been dropping 3 to 5 seconds per event.”
After three days of intense competition in four different finals, Hotchkiss went home having earned four well-deserved medals.
“My first two days were my best,” Hotchkiss said. “I did really well in the 100 free and 200 free. I was really happy with those.”
It concluded a sensational year for the senior phenom. In addition to doing so well at the Junior Olympics, Hotchkiss won four CIF titles in May as part of the Malibu High swim team.
“It was a really good year. CIF really summed up my year for me. I dropped my times and the relays were a lot of fun,” Hotchkiss said. “I tapered back into this summer meet and dropped more time in that. I’m pretty happy with everything.”
Hotchkiss is considering UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Pacific as possible colleges.
“He’s got tons of potential,” Alexandrov said. “If he keeps dropping, he will be one of the top recruits in the country.”
Stack, a sophomore at MHS, placed fourth in the consolation finals and 12th overall in the 100-meter backstroke with a time of 1:11.17, an improvement of 1.22 seconds on her entry time.
In the 50-meter freestyle, Stack achieved a personal best of 29.03 to take first in her heat. However, in a very fast field that resulted in an 18th place finish in prelims, Stack finished outside of the top 16, just missing the consolation finals.
She also participated in the 200-meter backstroke (20th place), 200-meter freestyle (22nd) and 100-meter freestyle (28th).
“I just wanted to make sure I went all out and that I went really strong,” Stack, 15, said about her five races. “I was focusing on keeping my head down and working on my technique and all things I work on in practice.”
Two up-and-coming stars, 13-year-olds Kennan Hotchkiss and Amy Perna, performed admirably in their events. Kennan swam the 400-meter freestyle and 800-meter freestyle and dropped close to six seconds in the 400 (4:42.75). Perna competed in the 50-meter freestyle and 100-meter freestyle and improved in the 50 with a time of 31.45.
