Swimming is by far one of the most popular sports at the Olympics. With Rio still fresh in mind, almost every single American is familiar with the names Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps. Minnetonka’s own Girls’ Swim & Dive coach David Plummer even won his own gold and bronze medals competing in Brazil. But what many students may or may not know is that one of their very own peers swam at trials, but sadly didn’t make the final cut. Corey Lau, class of 2017, shared some details about his experiences with swimming and competing in Omaha.
As a first grader, there was a flyer in his elementary school advertising the opportunity to join the swim team. Ten years later, and Lau’s still going strong, swimming for Minnetonka Swim Club and our Boys’ Swim & Dive team. But just like any other sport there were tough times, and Lau even states he thought about throwing in the towel all the time, adding, “nobody wants to jump into a freezing cold pool at six in the morning.”
It was only because his mom saw his success and potential that kept him going, even making him sign a contract to promise he would keep swimming for another four years.
Going to the Olympic Trials this past summer wasn’t exactly a personal goal of his, with Lau explaining that it was just something that sort of happened. The same thing goes with the 2020 Tokyo Games, it’s not something he’s specifically aiming for, but he’ll take it if the opportunity presents itself.

When describing the experience at trials, Lau states it was “really intense, but exciting,” with it overall being “[his] favorite experience throughout [his] entire swimming career.”
Since trials was nothing in comparison to his typical meets, it’s justified Lau was more nervous behind the blocks than he normally would be, especially since he was one of the youngest swimmers there. With swimming being seen as an individual sport, many outsiders aren’t familiar with the influence that comes with swimming for a team. Because club swimming in general is so individualized, the pressure intensifies at trials from having the focus being on individual swimmers and not a team as a whole.
Lau swam in two qualifying races, the 100-meter breaststroke and the 200-meter breaststroke. In the 100m he swam 1:04.08, ranking 99th out of 135 swimmers, being only 5.03 seconds behind the first place qualifier. At a glance a few seconds may not seem like such a big deal, but in swimming even milliseconds can make all the difference between first and last place. In the 200m Lau swam 2:21.60, ranking 90th out of 99 total, being 13.06 seconds behind the top swimmer. The shorter distance was definitely his best race out of the two, with his trials time being only 0.9 seconds slower than his current best time of 1:03.18.

His big takeaway from trials was that he was grateful for the experience in general, because “not many people get to experience [trials] at such a young age.” Besides club swimming, Lau says that he is very excited to be a captain for high school season this year saying, “they have a really good chance to win state this year, and [he] can’t wait to see what they’ll do.” As for any plans for his swimming career after high school, Lau will be attending Princeton University.