Converted Water Polo Player Logan Lakis Commits to UCSD After Gap Year

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Logan Lakis thought he was a water polo player at heart until the COVID-19 pandemic hit during his sophomore year of high school.

His Peninsula High School water polo team wanted to limit contact, so training shifted to more swimming and conditioning. Some players quit the program because of the new workouts. Lakis, on the other hand, didn’t mind them at all.

“I liked getting fast and getting better,” Lakis said. “I saw myself progressing, and that’s what I love about swimming: putting in the work and seeing it pay off in an easily measured way.”

Lakis participated in some freshman/sophomore swim meets as a freshman, but he didn’t practice with the team due to his water polo commitments. But at his first meet of his junior season, without much practice diving or doing flip turns, he broke 22 seconds in the 50 free, and his teammates convinced him to take the sport more seriously.

“I didn’t understand the weight of it, but my teammates told me, ‘It was fast, and it looked really bad, so you must be a natural,’” Lakis recalled.

Lakis started club swimming during the summer of 2021 before his senior year, telling himself he was going to be all-in with swimming for the upcoming season. But saying goodbye to water polo proved tougher than expected, and he ended up leading Peninsula’s water polo squad on a playoff run as a senior. During swim season that spring, he brought his lifetime best in the 50 free down to 20.54, but it was too late in the recruiting cycle to create any Division I buzz.

Instead of deciding it was too late to chase that dream, Lakis took a gap year, got his 50 free down to 20.35 at Sectionals in La Mirada, California, and made it impossible for D-I coaches to overlook him. Earlier this week, he announced his commitment to the University of California, San Diego (USCD) to swim for the Tritons beginning this fall.

UCSD, which competes in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF), recently finished fifth out of eight teams at last month’s conference championships. Lakis’ best times would have placed him in the B-final of the 50 free and C-final of the 100 free.

Best Times (SCY) 

• 50 free – 20.35
• 100 free – 46.41
• 200 free – 1:45.96
• 50 fly – 23.31
• 100 fly – 50.83

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