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Collin O’Brien of the Peoria Area Water Wizards (PAWW) has verbally committed to Saint Louis University for next fall. Swimming for Dunlap HS in Illinois, he anchored their medley relay at the IHSA State Champs (20.96), placed 10th in the 200 IM, and touched 8th in the 100 breast. Dunlap’s 400 free relay made it to finals, where they placed 11th. O’Brien anchored in 46.12, a touch off of his 45.93 split from prelims.
O’Brien’s Top Times
- 50 free – 21.30
- 100 free – 46.69
- 100 breast – 58.15
- 200 IM – 1:53.09
- 400 IM – 4:09.88
In addition to his yards repertoire, O’Brien has a Winter Juniors cut in the 100m breast.
O’Brien wouldn’t have finaled at last year’s competitive Atlantic-10 championships, though he would’ve been pretty close in all of his above events. He’s seen improvements each year for the last few seasons in all of his main events, including a 3+ second drop in the 200 IM from 2014 to 2015 and over a second drop in both the 100 free and 100 breast between those two seasons.
I chose SLU because of the great academic program and team atmosphere. It is a great school for aerospace engineering, and my goals for school. Coach Jim and Coach Maggie are smart coaches and I can’t wait to swim for them. The team is a bunch of great people and I just thought it was the best fit for me. I had a teammate (Grant Streid) whose sister (Taylor Streid) swam for SLU and absolutely loved it, which really started my search into the school.
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Great pick up for the Billikens. Lucky kid, he gets to train with a monsterous breaststroker/IMer and lady killer nguyenie-da-PHUUUUUU next year. Nguyenie will be a senior during Colin’s freshman year, but at least he’ll be able to spend one year with the man that does nothing but Nguyen. Best of luck to Colin during his senior year.