Daily Journal Boys’ Swimmer of the Year: Woodside’s Seth Collet

The RSV eventually turned into bronchitis. Collet kept swimming. When the bronchitis morphed into pneumonia, he finally stopped swimming.

“After about two weeks, it was getting harder to take a full breath. I said to myself, ‘Maybe this is the time when I stop and go to the doctor.’ My body gave out before my mind did,” Collet said. “It led me to being out of the water for two months. That was probably the lowest point of my life.”

Collet was finally back in the pool after the new year and he certainly made up for lost time. He went on to win both the 100-yard backstroke and 100-yard freestyle at the Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division championships. He went on to win the 100 back at the Central Coast Section championships and make the “A” final in the 200 free, making him the San Mateo Daily Journal Boys’ Swimmer of the Year.

“He takes swimming very seriously,” Woodside head coach Stephanie Couch said. “If you see Seth swim, if you’re standing around, people will be like, ‘Oh my god. Look at that guy.’”

Not surprisingly, Collet, who recently completed his sophomore year, has been swimming his whole life and grew up in a swimming family. His grandfather was an assistant swim coach at Stanford, his mother swam in the Olympic trials and his older brother was a Division I college swimmer. Collet said he started swimming at 3 years old and started competing when he was 8.

Now, he’s one of the best swimmers in the state. But he certainly had his work cut out for him after battling back from illness. He said one of the first things he did when he got back in the pool was swim the 500 free.

“I did a terrible time,” Collet said. But by the end of his winter training, he had dropped 50 seconds off that swim, so he saw he was rounding into form.

That form showed in the PAL championships, where he was named Rick Longyear Swimmer of the Meet. Collet had the second-fastest qualifying times in both the 100 back and the 100 free. In his first individual race of the PAL championships, the 100 free, Collet trailed Menlo-Atherton’ Landon Picard in the prelims, with Picard posting a 47.16 compared to Collet’s 48.42.

In the finals, however, Collet turned the tables, with his 46.53 holding off Picard’s 46.68.

Collet came back later in the meet for his specialty, the 100 back. Again, he had the second-fastest qualifying time, trailing Aragon’s Gabriel Anagnoson, 52.00 to 53.12.

Again, Collet turned on the jets in the final, beating Anagnoson to the wall with a time of 49.92, the only sub-50 time in the final.

Collet carried that momentum into the CCS championships the following weekend, but instead of the swimming the 100 free, he took on the 200 free, having swam a qualifying time earlier in the season. He posted the seventh-fastest time in the prelims, 1:42.41, to make the “A” final and dropped his time to 1:42.08 in the final, good for seventh.

“When we were at CCS and he wasn’t thrilled (with his 200 free swim), he started looking at his videos. He was trying to evaluate his stroke (right after the race). Who does that?” Couch said. “I’m sure that was fuel for him (in the 100 back).”

The 100 back race is competed at the back end of schedule, so Collet had plenty of time to stew after his 200 final. By the time he took his place on the starting line for the 100 back, he was looking to make a statement.

He and Crystal’s Bennet Lacerte tied for the fastest qualifying time, with both swimming 49.97 in the prelims. Lacerte would drop almost half a second in the final, posting a 49.49, but he couldn’t catch Collet, who captured the title with a 49.31.

While that qualified Collet for the state meet, he gave up his spot, citing school and an unusually long taper for his decision. Tapering means a swimmer cuts back on heavy training so as to be fresh for championship races. It’s a delicate balance and if done incorrectly, can have a severe impact on performance.

“The plan the entire time was not to go to state,” Collet said. “I tapered for two weeks leading up CCS. For me, that’s about the time my body needs to reach peak. If I tapered another week, I don’t think that would have been pretty. The plan next year is to go to state and taper differently.”

As far as school goes, he simply did not want to miss any more time and on the Friday of the state preliminaries, he had an important math test which would have decided his final grade in the class.

“The academics, the entire [season], was hard to balance,” Collet said. “At state, you’d have to miss one day (of class), but I had a math test. For me, academics always comes first, so I had to choose that.”

Now that the high school season is over, Collet will focus on swimming with his club team, Ladera Oaks, as he begins training for the junior nationals later this summer.

Naturally, college is on the horizon for Collet, with Stanford being the dream school. But his recruiting won’t take off in earnest until next year and any talk of anything beyond that is a little too far in the distance.

“Right now, the goal is to take one step at a time,” Collet said.