This trip was a second chance Kyle Ediger needed.
Last year, Ediger was a victim of his own underestimation — he didn’t know just how good a swimmer he was. This year, armed with the knowledge that he could compete on a national level, the Emporia State student made sure he was prepared to do it.
After Ediger finally arrived — better late than never — at the U.S. Masters Long Course National Championships last week, he proceeded to make the most of it.
“I definitely made up for last year,” he said. “This was an amazing experience.”
Ediger swam in five individual events in the 25-29 age group from Thursday to Sunday, and clocked personal best times in all of them. He finished in second place in the 200-meter freestyle race, set a Missouri Valley Masters regional record in the 100 backstroke and finished in the top five in all five events.
After that performance, the Junction City native, 27, isn’t dwelling on what he missed out on when he didn’t budget to make the trip to last year’s Long Course National meet in Gresham, Ore.
“I felt I did much better this year than I ever would’ve last year,” he said. “Just with the training I’ve put in in the last year, I’ve got another year of training under my belt. As of last summer, I’d only been back in the pool for a year, so I doubled my time in the pool and had quite a few meets, more experience.”
Following a 2002 injury to his anterior cruciate ligament during dry land practice, Ediger didn’t get back into serious swimming for five years. Beginning in August 2007, he trained by himself and coached himself to prepare for a return to competitive swimming.
When the Missouri Valley Masters regional meet in Lenexa rolled around last year, Ediger figured he would qualify for Nationals, but only barely. So he didn’t plan to make the trip to Gresham. When he not only qualified, but won four races at the regional meet in the process, Ediger realized that going to Oregon would’ve been worth his while. Even so, he simply turned his attention to making Nationals in 2009.
Upon arriving in Indianapolis, Ediger wasted no time making the biggest group of splashes in his swimming career. He posted a time of 2 minutes, 2.68 seconds in the 200 free last Thursday to finish second.
“It all started Thursday with that first race, the 200 free, where I annihilated my personal best by 5 1/2 seconds, and (also) my Masters best by 11 seconds,” he said. “I knew I had a shot at (having) some lifetime-best swims. I was a little surprised by how much I (beat my old times by).”
The next day, Ediger went 1:04.96 in the 100 back to finish fourth and set the Missouri Valley mark. He also finished in fifth in the 100 freestyle with a time of 55.79.
On Saturday, he competed in relays with members of his Missouri Valley team, the Movy Masters. While swimming the opening leg of the 400 medley relay, Ediger re-broke the 100 backstroke record he had just set a day earlier, posting a time of 1:04.79. The relay squad finished in seventh place in that race, and his teams finished in sixth in the 800 free, third in the 400 free and second in the 200 medley. He had swum with and against the members of his relay teams before, but hadn’t done relays with them before this weekend.
“They usually train together, and they all know each other,” Ediger said. “And I kind of opened their eyes by how I swam and became more accepted by them.”
Sunday’s final day of the meet brought the 400 free, in which Ediger finished fourth at 4:28.10, and the 50 free, in which he finished fifth at 25.49. Five individual races, five personal bests.
Knee injuries, and the way Ediger has reacted to them, are now firmly a part of his story; he started swimming competitively just 11 years ago after a knee injury kept him from trying out for basketball at Junction City High. His swimming career, including his rubber-burning ascent back from the last injury, will be featured in an upcoming issue of “USMS Swimmer” magazine.
Ediger, who’s also a coach for the Emporia Aquatic Club, is on track to graduate from ESU in December with a degree in recreation. He doesn’t know where he’ll end up after graduating, but he wants to stay in coaching and plans to keep on competing. The Short Course National meet is in Atlanta in May, and he plans to be there; next year’s Long Course meet, however, is in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“That’s quite a trip,” Ediger said. “But we’ll see.”
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