While many of America’s established stars were battling it out at the Charlotte stop of the Arena Pro Series or the Atlanta Classic Swim Meet, high schoolers in California were busy lighting up the short course yards pool. Competing at the 2016 CIF Southern Section Swimming & Diving Championships held in Riverside, California, Grant Shoults set two national high school records.
While Maxime Rooney was the first to put his name back in the record books with a National High School standard in the 200 freestyle with a 1:33.70, Grant Shoults broke the record just a few hours later. Touching in 1:33.26, Shoults broke the National High School standard to take Rooney’s name off the books and become the fastest high school performer in the 200 free. Ironically, Shoults also earned the performance of the week this same week one year ago, also for his 200 freestyle. In that swim, he was 1:34.54 to break the independent national high school record, just missing Tom Shields’ then overall record of 1:33.83.
Later in the meet, the senior also broke the national high school record in the 500 freestyle, touching in 4:12.87. Shoults has committed to swimming for Stanford University in the fall of 2016, and should be a major force at U.S. Trials next month. He currently has long course bests of 1:48.10 in the 200 and 3:48.91 in the 400, both from the 2015 FINA World Junior Championships.
Congratulations Grant Shoults on earning Swimming World’s Performance of the Week!