This Wichita Collegiate state champion swimmer is a rarity in club-dominated sport

In a sport where year-round participation is the standard for the best of the best, Collegiate swimmer Derek Yang stands alone.

He doesn’t swim for a club. In fact, he says he doesn’t swim outside the three months of the year when he participates for his high school swimming team.

It’s an unconventional path, but one that left Yang standing alone when it mattered most — voted Swimmer of the Meet by Class 5-1A coaches for his double-gold performance in his individual races at the Kansas high school state swimming championships in Topeka this past weekend.

“Being somebody who has never been a club swimmer in high school, it’s definitely a little trademark of mine,” Yang said. “My dad always tells me since I’m not a club swimmer, I don’t really have anything to lose when I get in the water. It helps with that anxiety, knowing I’m just in for a season and then I’m out.”

Yang no longer swims year-round, but he did before he reached high school and comes from a family of strong swimmers. He left club swimming because he experienced burnout, but couldn’t give up the sport altogether because he craved the adrenaline rush of competition in the water.

He has been one of the state’s top swimmers in previous years, but this year is when Yang separated himself into another category. And that makes him a rarity in the age of specialization.

“He only swims three months in the year, but for those three months he is 100% all-in,” Collegiate coach Kamren Hall said. “It’s very rare to be able to compete at that level against kids who do swim year-round, so for him not only to compete, but to be a state champion is truly rare and really shows his ability.”

Instead of training in the water during the high school offseason, Yang trains in the weight room. He doesn’t compete in any other sport, rather spending time on his academics, other hobbies and his love for lifting weights.

He is known as a sprinter in the swimming pool, so increasing his power to gain an advantage over the competition has allowed him to make up for the lost time honing his technique. The strength is most noticeable at the beginning of Yang’s races, where he is able to detonate off the block and slice through his underwaters to build an early lead.

“A lot of the club guys have endurance,” Yang said. “But where I found I could get them is with my power.”

It’s the reason why Yang was the only swimmer in Kansas this season to crack 21 seconds in 50-yard freestyle, winning his first individual gold medal with a season-best time of 20.79 seconds.

But he isn’t all brute power, evident by his win later in the meet in the 100-yard butterfly, an event that rewards power, yes, but also requires good technique. Yang lowered his season-best time to 50.75 seconds to win by nearly two seconds over the field.

“He’s really strong and really smart and it takes a lot of skill to be able to incorporate both your strength and technique into a stroke as technical as the butterfly,” Hall said. “The core power that he has and how he slaps his legs down into the water and his spin turn, that power is really evident.”

Teammate Nathan Lynch also became a first-time state champion, clearing the field in the breaststroke by a full second with his season-best time of 58.87. Lynch added a fourth-place medal in the individual medley, as well.

Collegiate racked up 278 team points to notch the best state finish in school history with a runner-up team trophy. Other swimmers who earned individual medals included junior Harry Ling (fourth in 500 free, fifth in 200 free), sophomore Luke Cremin (fifth in 500 free, seventh in butterfly), senior Paul Mines (sixth in 200 free, eighth in 100 free) and freshman Karim Sandid (eighth in 500 free, eighth in breaststroke).

Collegiate won its third straight state title in the 200 medley relay with Yang swimming a leg on each one. This time, he was joined by Sandid, Lynch and Mines to win in a season-best time of 1:37.10. Yang also anchored the 200 free relay, which included Cremin, Mines and Ling, to a silver-medal finish, while the squad of Cremin, Ling, Lynch and Sandid took fifth in the 400 free relay.

Despite his talent for the sport, Yang said he is planning on “hanging up my goggles” to attend college as a student.

The thrill of competing in the water will be gone, but there is an unmatched satisfaction in leaving on what Yang called a perfect ending.

“It was an amazing way to end my career,” Yang said. “I got out of the water after my last race and just thought, ‘Wow, I will never swim in high school again.’ It was a surreal feeling and I’m just happy that I was able to end on a good note for myself and know that I left everything I had out there.”