Destin Lasco, who hails from Pleasantville, New Jersey and ranks #2 on our way too early list of top-20 recruits from the high school class of 2020, has announced his verbal commitment to the University of California, Berkeley for the fall of 2020. There he will join Dylan Hawk, Forrest Frazier and Matthew Jensen in the class of 2024. Lasco’s older brother Glenn Lasco is a freshman on the Lehigh University men’s swimming and diving team.
Lasco is currently a junior at Mainland Regional High School. Last season as a sophomore, he rocked the New Jersey Meet of Champions with 4 gold medals: 200 IM, 500 free, 200 free relay and 400 free relay, two of them (200 IM and 200 free relay) in record time. In the IM, he dropped 2.3 seconds from his previous best time (1:46.90) to win with a record-breaking 1:44.59. One event after winning the 500 free (4:24.90, 0.86 off the meet record), he split a 19.99 on the end of Mainland’s 200 free relay, then finished the meet with a 43.35 anchor on the 400 free relay.
Lasco is one of the best backstrokers for a high school junior in recent memory. He recently aged out of the 15-16s as the #2 100-yard backstroker of all time (he was #1 until Gianluca Urlando broke the NAG at Winter Juniors), and he owns the #3 200-yard back time behind only Ryan Murphy and Carson Foster. Lasco also has the best 100 free in the class, and only Urlando and Foster have been faster than him in the 200 IM.
Lasco does his club swimming with Pleasantville Aquatics. He recently competed at 2018 Winter National Championships where he was an A finalist in the 100 free (4th) and 200 free (8th) and a B finalist in the 100 back, 200 back, and 200 IM. Last summer he represented Team USA at Junior Pan Pacific Championships and took home a pair of gold medals in the 100 back and 4×100 free relay. He also won the consolation finals of the 50 free and 100 free.
Lasco’s best 100 back time would have tied for 16th place in prelims at last year’s 2018 NCAA Division I Championships and he is within striking distance of scoring in the 200 back (it took 1:40.27 to get a second swim in 2018) and 100 free (it took 42.25). Cal’s highest-finishing 100 backstroker in 2018 was then-freshman Daniel Carr, who took 11th with 45.24.
Best SCY times:
- 100 back – 45.93
- 200 back – 1:41.77
- 100 free – 43.62
- 200 IM – 1:44.59
- 400 IM – 3:48.22
- 100 fly – 48.64
- 200 free – 1:37.00
- 50 free – 20.72
If you have a commitment to report, please send an email with a photo (landscape, or horizontal, looks best) and a quote to [email protected].
Congrats to Destin!!
Great pick up for Cal. Lots of battles between he and Foster through the years to come
The rich get richer
Congrats to Destin!
Does anyone know how Vinny Marciano is doing? I remember him and Lasco were always switching NAGS back in forth in the backstrokes back when they were 11-12. It almost seemed like Swimswam posters were making a little bit of a rivarly out of it. I feel like I remember hearing Marciano broke a 100 free NAG at some point, but I just don’t see his name as much anymore. Any updates?
Vinny is not swimming anymore. Burnt out and quit. Talented kid
The arms race continues!
Oh My God! 😎 😎 😎 😎 😎 😎 😎 😎
The biggest news today is easily Andrei Minakov being at University of Florida. He is currently way better than any of US guys. His dolphin kicks is out of this world compared to the other swimmers in his class.
He’s a great replacement for Dressel.
You can’t disagree!
i’d rather focus on being happy for Destin and his commitment, we can wait to praise Minakov until his individual post comes out.
I agree! Destin is an awesome swimmer and cal will most likely be an amazing school for him. I didn’t mean to disparage Destin’s commitment. I have been looking forward to see where Destin was going. My comment was more of an answer to the comments stating that there was a lot of commitment that day/week and I’m stoked about Minakov being at UF
it’s over