Daily Journal Boys’ Swimmer of the Year: Menlo-Atherton’s Michael Powell

Additionally, he had second-place finishes in both league and section in the 200 free to earn the honor of Daily Journal Boys’ Swimmer of the Year.

“This high school season, I was trying to get back and correct the mistakes I made last year,” said Powell, who will go into his senior year looking to add a third PAL and CCS title in four years.

“I was really focused on putting up some good times in the 5 free,” Powell said. He said at the beginning of the season, the team held what would amount to a scrimmage, just to see where everyone was, time-wise.

Fresh off a vacation to Hawaii, with minimal training, Powell set a new personal record by two seconds.

“I was ready to bring it,” Powell said.

But there was a whole team season to complete before the postseason and Powell adopted a different role for the Bears, as head coach Bruce Smith employed his Swiss army knife of a swimmer.

“Our main (team) goal was to go undefeated in PAL (regular-season dual meets),” said Smith, who founded and is head coach for Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics (PASA).

“[Powell] was going to have play a big role in that,” Smith continued. “He was going to have to be versatile. … He needed to be diverse.”

Like all elite high school swimmers, Powell swims for a local club — Ladera Oaks in Portola Valley — so he more than adept at all four swim strokes and is more than competitive in nearly every one of the eight individual races contested at a high school swim meet.

So much so that Powell ended up setting new school records in the 100 back and 200 individual medley.

Additionally, Smith didn’t want to burn out Powell in his signature events. The strategy was two-fold: having Powell swim in other events than the 200 and 500 free allowed the Bears to pile up points in other events.

“We have other 500 swimmers. We have other 200 swimmers,” Smith said. “(The goal is to) swim (the 500) two or three times in dual meets.”

By limiting Powell in the two longest races in a high school meet — eight laps for the 200 free and 20 laps for the 500 free — it kept him sharp for the postseason.

“The 500 and 200 are his bread and butter,” Smith said. “But I still feel like if you swim (those races) every week and then go to CCS, you get dull. That was my challenge to him.”

And perhaps that strategy is what put Powell back on top of the podium because leading into the PAL Bay Division championships, Powell got sick following prom, which kept him from being at his complete best.

But he still had enough in the tank to hold off Mills’ Dylan Yang to win his second Bay Division 500 free title in a time of 4:27.54, just ahead of Yang’s 4:28.31. Feeling a little better a week later at the CCS trials at Independence High School in San Jose, Powell was the No. 1 qualifier with a time of 4:26.58. The final came down to another battle between Powell and Yang, with Powell prevailing by little more than half a second — 4:25.07 to 4:25.69.

“I was a little concerned because I know Dylan is a talented swimmer,” Powell said. “I knew he brought some trouble.”

But Powell was spurred on by a former club teammate. Seth Collet, a 2025 Woodside graduate and the Daily Journal’s Swimmer of the Year in both 2023 and 2025, decided to swim the 500 free during his senior year at Woodside for the first time, knocking Powell off the top of the podium.

But Powell used the presence of his friendly rival to propel him to the CCS title in 2026.

“Seth and I are good buddies,” Powell said. “I said, ‘I have to win this or I’m going to let him down.’”

It was a bittersweet victory, however. Powell had a goal of swimming under 4:20 at CCS, but the illness kept him from reaching that time.

“Definitely would have liked to be more in shape for CCS,” Powell said. “”I was sick going into it. Do I keep training?

“It’s kind of hard to be upset (not reaching that time), but be happy at the same time (winning titles).”

Yang, however, did not go home empty handed — at PALs or CCS. Yang, also a junior, captured the Bay Division and CCS championships in the 200 free, beating Powell both times.

“The 200 — I dabble a little,” Powell said. “I’m not crazy good at it.”

At the CIF State Meet, Powell finished the trials as the fourth-fastest qualifier with a time of 4:25.49 to qualify for the “A” final — the top eight swimmers in the state. Powell finished fifth with a time of 4:25.79.

“Michael, he’s good at it (the 500), but a lot of it, for him, is his training mentality,” Smith said. “He loves the sense of satisfaction when he’s done a hard (training) set. If he does an easy set, he does not get out of the pool feeling accomplished. That’s what keeps him motivated. He just loves doing the hard stuff.”

Despite the 500 free being the longest and most grueling race at the high school level, it’s more of a middle-distance race in the overall age-group swimming scene, where swimmers can compete in both the 1,500 and mile. Powell swims both those races, so the 500 is almost like a sprint to him.

For many, training and competing in the 500 is looked at as punishment. Not many swimmers willing and happily swim the 500.

“I just kind of really liked doing it because I was good at it,” Powell said. “Partly because not a lot of people like to do it. I like it because I can do the 5 free and you can’t.”