Kelsey Zhang, 14, is Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics’ breakout swimming star

The breakout star for PASA this summer has been the kid, 14-year-old Kelsey Zhang, a Los Gatos native who reached the podium at the Speedo Junior National Championships in Irvine last week with a sixth-place finish in the 100-meter women’s butterfly. But its Zhang’s role in two relay events where J-Cheng’s role as a “quiet leader” comes into play.

“They have a ton of fun with [relays],” PASA coach Paul Coleman said. “And because of that they tend to race really well.”

PASA’s relay teams are a patchwork of standout individual swimmers, and they have done well to give the highly regarded swimming club a competitive edge this summer. PASA is composed of six different training sites, including J-Cheng’s home pool Rinconada in Palo Alto, so many of the relay swimmers train in different cities.

The team of J-Cheng, Zhang, Audrey Holden and Eugenie Lanilis didn’t reach the podium in Irvine. Their best event was the women’s 4x50-meter freestyle, taking 13th place with a time of 1 minute, 46.60 seconds, including the best individual split from J-Cheng, with a 26.34 on the second leg. At the Futures Championship, though, the team took third place in the women’s 400-meter free relay, helping the PASA women to a second-place team finish and the PASA combined team (men’s and women’s) to first place overall in the regional event.

Zhang — who is heading into her freshman year of high school this month — was the breakout star of the Futures Championship for the PASA women, taking first place in the women’s 800 free and third place in the 100 fly.

“I think people have been hoping and anticipating her coming, but she really stepped up to the plate this summer,” Coleman said.

It was in Irvine where Zhang proved to be one of the top swimmers in her age group in the nation — if not the top swimmer among 14-year-olds. It was her first national meet with PASA. Last year she technically competed in the Winter Junior Championships, but the event was divided into east and west meets in 2021 to mitigate travel demands.

She made a swift impression in Irvine. Of the eight ladies swimming in the women’s 200-meter fly finals, she was the only 14-year-old. Three were 16, three were 17, and first-place finisher Alex Shackell out of Carmel, Indiana was the only 15-year-old.

Zhang’s sixth-place time of 2:13.34 is a qualifying cut for the Olympic Trials in 2024, Coleman said.

“This was pretty big,” said Bruce Smith, PASA coach who also runs the swimming program at Menlo-Atherton. “Kelsey has been a pretty amazing swimmer since the age of 9 or 10. We could see the writing on the wall, but this is bigger than we were envisioning.”

The relay team of Holden, J-Cheng, Lanilis and Zhang also took 17th in the women’s 4x100 free relay in 3:54.63; and 28th in the 4x100 medley relay in 4:24.31.

J-Cheng — who is verbally committed to swim at Northwestern University — did not qualify for the finals in either of her individual events — the women’s 100-meter and 200-meter breast. She is PASA’s top swimmer in both events though, just as Zhang leads the club in the individual fly events.

“There’s some strokes we need more help in,” Coleman said. “Breaststroke and butterfly we seems to have an abundance in and both those two kind of lead that charge right now.”

The only swimmer from the Burlingame Aquatic Club to compete in the Junior National Championships was incoming San Mateo High School senior Parker Del Balso, who did not qualify for the finals in two events — the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke.