(MOBILE, Ala.) – In just over a month, two Mobile-area high school students will compete for a chance to swim with Team USA at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.
16-year-olds Will Glass and Marlon Brutkiewicz qualified for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials at the CentruyLink Center in Omaha, Nebraska
Out of 250,000 competative swimmers nationwide, around 1,500 will make it to the Olympic Trials, with each swimmer vying for one of a few dozen spots on the U.S. National Team.
Glass and Brutkiewicz have been training for the swim meet for months at Bishop State Community College with the rest of the City of Mobile Swim Association.
"They have quite a bit of work to do,” CMSA Head Coach Greg Davis said. “They are extremely tired and broken down right now. We won't start to rest until about two weeks out of their first swim."
After qualifying for the 100m butterfly last year, McGill Toolen High School Junior Will Glass adds the 100m and 200m backstroke to the list of events he will be swimming this summer.
"We did a lot of training, a lot of working out and all that,” Glass said. “It's been that way consistently since December.
“Once we get into the summer, it'll probably progress into more like everyday two-a-day's."
Glass will not be swimming at the trials alone. UMS Wright Junior Marlon Brutkiewicz met Olympic standards in the 200m breaststroke this March, after falling short by fractions of a second at a December tournament in Austin, Texas.
"I came really close to the cut, so I kind of knew I was going to get it as long as I had some good meets,” Brutkiewicz said. “I never thought I was going to go to the Olympic trials, but it's pretty cool."
Coach Greg Davis said both Brutkiewicz and Glass are record holders with the CMSA. Davis said 16-year-old Will Glass is ranked as one of the top three swimmers in the country for his age group.
Davis said the two Alabama natives have the potential to swim in the Olympics, but they first have to pass a major test in the Olympic Trials in Omaha next month.
"Once you go to this meet there's no other bigger meet in the world, besides the Olympics," Davis said.
The teens will be racing against the sport’s elite; names like Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. Having coached at the trials before, Davis said the two need to be focused.
"They both are very tough mentally,” Davis said. “They both really don't over-think things too much. They love to get up there and race, and those are the swimmers that do the best; when they don't think too much, and they just get up and race.
Should the two teens not qualify for the Olympics this year, they still have an outside chance of making the U.S. Junior National Team if they meet the time qualification at the Olympic Trials.
The 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials in Omaha begin June 25th.
