Since just the ripe age of 4-years-old, Nathan Kruszewski has been swimming.

His mom has been coaching him since he was 3-years-old. And at 12, he wanted to become a pro-swimmer. He scored a perfect time of 26.69 seconds in the 50-yard swim. After that, Nathan was determined to do something with it, so he stopped playing soccer to focus on his swimming.

Nathan feels that his parents coaching him is a good thing, but also a bad thing. He feels like he can’t get away with some things since his mom is his coach. Nathan thinks he learns better from his parents when they coach him, rather than by other coaches. Nathan’s mom’s way of coaching is more focused on him so he can do better. He doesn’t think any differently when his parents watch his races. When things get pointed out to him, he believes he’ll do better next time.

Nathan’s method of calming down before a race is going behind the stands to clear his mind, then he focuses on how he’s going to finish, and nothing else. Nathan wishes for his parents, family, girlfriend, and friends to watch him race. Nathan also wanted to break Sahuaro’s record.

Nathan qualified for the state championship three years in a row now. In his sophomore year, he got seventh place at 22.99 seconds. When he went to State his sophomore year, he realized he was kind of short compared to all the other kids. Once he went to race, he saw that he was going up against kids that had the same body type as him.

In his junior year, he got twenty-third place at 23.83 seconds. “Once you got out of the pool, you had to put your mask right back on,” Nathan said. He realized that people were swimming slower times that year than the year before. Nathan was motivated to beat his time from sophomore year.  During Covid, Nathan lost 13 pounds. In his senior year, he had gotten eleventh place at 22.81 seconds, then fifteenth place on the 100 freestyle at 51.31 seconds. Nathan had definitely felt faster than his sophomore year. Nathan thinks hopefully taking a break from swimming will motivate him to keep swimming.