Wild about swimming

Chelsea Wild has been a master of the 200 and 500-yard freestyle swimming events for a while now.

She set the Laguna Beach High girls’ school records in those events her freshman year. The past three years have been an exercise in whittling those times down, little by little.

But this year, there’s another freshman to look out for. He’s a Wild, too.

Billy Wild has been a big boost to the Breakers boys, as well, especially in his favorite events of the 100 butterfly and 200 individual medley.

“When he’s at the meets, and we swim some of the same events, I want to beat him,” Chelsea Wild said. “It’s just more motivation.”

Not that she needs it. Chelsea is no stranger to the CIF meet, and the USC-bound distance freestyle standout has already had some great swims this year.

She’s posting CIF Southern Section Division III automatic times everywhere she goes. At the Lake Elsinore meet March 21, she posted automatic times in the 200 free (1 minute, 55.53 seconds), 500 free (5:09.92), 50 free (25.77 seconds) and 100 free (54.74).

To put it in perspective, those times would all be at least consideration times in Division I “” and the season is still relatively young.

Chelsea Wild’s school records in the 200 and 500 free now stand at roughly 1:52 and 4:58, she said. But she wants to improve those times this season, and why not? This year’s exceptionally strong senior class, also including swimmers like UCLA-bound Andrea Reigel, Stanford-bound Annika Dries, Cal-bound Taylor Dodson, Madison Duncan and Hannah Fait, has been posting fast times the past few weeks.

They want to defend their Orange Coast League title.

“We’re definitely really excited to swim fast this year,” Chelsea Wild said. “It’s our senior year, so we’re looking forward to going out with a bang and doing everything that we want to accomplish. It’s just been great having the other girls who have been with me in swimming. Since our freshman year, we’ve all been here together.

“This year, what we really want to accomplish is making sure that the times that we swim at CIF are times that are going to go on the record board here at Laguna Beach, and times that are going to hopefully stand for a while.”

The Wilds moved from south Florida right before Chelsea’s freshman year, but she immediately made her mark both at Laguna Beach and at Irvine-based Novaquatics, her and Billy’s club team.

Dries said she remembers it well.

“She’s a club swimmer, and most of us were coming from water polo,” Dries said.

“It’s fun. Freshman year, she helped me with my dive, or my flip turn, or my relay start. She was really helpful in getting us to be better swimmers.”

The senior girls also have a special thing going in the relay events. In 2006, freshmen Wild, Dries, Dodson and Reigel finished first at the Division II consolation final of the 400 free relay. Laguna Beach was fifth the next year. Last year, the Breakers suffered a disqualification in that event, but the 200 free relay team of Dries, Natasha Schulman, Wild and Reigel “” all juniors at the time “” placed fourth.

But this was not Wild at her best. She failed to make the finals in each of her individual events, struggling after she was diagnosed with asthma earlier in the season.

“I wanted to put my energy to making the relays do well.,” she said. “It was hard for me, but it wasn’t a life-or-death situation. I learned how to deal with it with my swimming. In the sport of swimming, it’s all about having good lung capacity, and being able to have good breath control. When you have a setback like [asthma], it’s something you have to overcome physically and mentally. You have to just push through and be strong ... I’ve definitely moved on from that and I’m definitely ready to go this year.”

So is her brother, Billy. He has been one of the most dependable boys’ swimmers for first-year Coach Kari Johnson. In the Breakers’ win over Sage Hill last week, he had first-place, CIF consideration times in the 200 IM (2:09.20) and 100 fly (57.01).

He also has the competitive fire of his sister.

“It’s all about what you can do,” he said. “[High school swimming] is definitely different than club swimming, with all the meets every week. Swimming with Chelsea during these meets, it makes me want to do longer events like 200 and 500 free and beat her.”

Don’t count out Chelsea, though. She has a lot of determination in her 5-foot-1 frame. She’ll be taking it to the Trojans next year, where she’ll swim under the renowned Dave Salo, her former coach at Novaquatics.

“Honestly, swimming is mind over matter,” she said. “If you know you can do it, you can do it, regardless of your size, how big your feet are, how big your hands are, how big your muscles are. Most of it is just being mentally tough.”