By Sean Griffin on SwimSwam
The 2025 California High School Swimming and Diving postseason is in full swing. Last week, all of the section meets were contested, and now the State Championships are set to take place this weekend, May 16–17th, at Clovis West High School.
Before the competition begins on Friday, SwimSwam has obtained race videos of Luka Mijatovic from the North Coast Section Championships this past weekend. Special thanks to Matt Rees for providing the videos for us to share on our YouTube channel.
The Foothills sophomore and junior national distance star remained undefeated in his primary events heading into the State Championships, defending his titles in the 200 and 500 freestyle with times of 1:34.44 and 4:14.17, respectively. The latter represents a North Coast Section championship record, as it chopped three seconds off the record Northgate’s Alexei Sancov set in 2018 (4:17.17).
Earlier this year, Mijatovic clocked 4:10.96, establishing a new U.S. boys’ 15-16 National Age Group record. Comparing this time to where he was during his freshman year, his swim this past weekend is faster than the 4:16.57 he posted to win the CIF State Championship. He’s positioned himself well to defend that title later this month, and improve from his silver medal in the 200 free, where he owns a best time of 1:34.10 from early April.
He’s seeded more than five seconds ahead of Woodside senior Seth Collet, who swam a lifetime best of 4:19.73 to win the Central Coast title. The gap is much narrower in the 200 free, as Nathan Foucu swam a Central Coast championship record of 1:35.40 twice last weekend.
Looking ahead, Mijatovic is balancing his focus between the upcoming State Championships and the long course meets this summer, with the U.S. National Championships (World Championship Trials) from June 3-7 in Indianapolis taking top priority. He shared that he did not taper for the North Coast meet, saying, “We’re in the very hard part of the training, so to be able to put up these times right before Nationals is amazing.”
He added, “I just like the hunger for the times, the motivation. I like to race everybody; it’s really fun. Coming up in a couple of meets, I’ve got Nationals and hopefully I qualify for Junior Worlds in Romania, which are in August.”
Mijatovic, who has already set an astonishing 15 National Age Group records in his young career, swims for the Pleasanton Seahawks when not representing his high school. Widely regarded as the best American distance talent in generations, he made headlines last July by breaking the longest-standing National Age Group record on the books—Jesse Vassallo’s 1500-meter free mark from 1976.
Quick Interview:
200 Free Race Video:
500 Free Race Video:
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