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.
Honestly either meet would be great for him. He’d obviously place much higher at juniors but he’s already dominating and regardless of which one he swims he’ll get whatever recognition he deserves
Does the US still have the dumb policy of not being allowed to juniors if you make the senior team? I can see why he would wanna focus on juniors and swim all the events he wants to peak for this year.
I like that his goal is Junior worlds. If he starts making Senior national teams soon that’s great, but take it one step at a time and don’t put too much pressure on yourself
Sounds like his goal is world Jrs but I’m curious what it will be if he ends up qualifying for Singapore. Also this confirmed what I was thinking about CIF’s as a tune up and starting to rest for trials likely him and Tegan not sure who else fits into that I would say Gabi but it sounds like she isn’t swimming at CIF’s. Also based off this meet I’m fairly confident in saying he’s breaking Rex’s National HS record this week
gabi is swimming; she’s for d2 hs