Mackenzie O’Brien chasing large objectives with Williamston ladies swimming

Mackenzie O’Brien all the time made it a degree to look on the varsity file boards on the partitions when she’s frolicked on the Williamston pool over the previous few years.

She thought lots of these prime instances can be tough to achieve.

That’s not the case for the freshman, who has her sights on lots of these prime marks as she’s opened her highschool profession robust for the Williamston ladies swimming group.

O’Brien, who was voted the LSJ ladies highschool athlete of the week, entered the Hornets’ twin meet in opposition to Charlotte on Sept. 25 rating as one in all Greater Lansing’s quickest swimmers this season. She owns the quickest instances within the CAAC within the 200 freestyle (1:58.25), 200 particular person medley (2:14.95), 50 freestyle (25.15), 100 freestyle (54.96), 500 freestyle (5:33.83) and the 100 backstroke (1:01.29).

And O’Brien has hopes of carrying out far more this season.

“I definitely am wanting to break some of the records on our record board at Williamston and I want to place first at states, ultimately, by the end,” O’Brien mentioned.

O’Brien is already not far off a number of of the varsity data — many held by former standout Gwen Eisenbeis — together with her instances in Williamston’s opening three twin meets.

“It is very impressive,” Williamston coach Madi Stewart mentioned. “I haven’t seen any domination like this from any swimmer in quite a few years and this is the first time I’ve seen it done by a freshman.”

O’Brien entered highschool as a embellished swimmer. She received a 50 butterfly state title for her journey group over the summer season additionally and claimed a pair of state titles in her center college season, which included successful the 100 IM and setting a file within the 50 butterfly.

“It was definitely a shock, especially this past summer,” O’Brien mentioned of her previous state titles. “I only won by one-hundredth of a second and I was ranked sixth going into that event so it was definitely surprising and I was not expecting that at all. The middle school states was exciting, especially since I had gotten the record. I really pushed myself and I had dropped two seconds off my time originally.”

Stewart believes extra particular issues are on the horizon for O’Brien, particularly with the group surrounding her at Williamston.

“She’s very ambitious and I love that,” Stewart mentioned. “We have goals to reset the entire record board before she leaves. We have an opportunity to take the medley relay record really, really quickly here and that’s a 20-year old record, and just put her name all over (the records), kind of like what Gwen did.

“The distinction on this group that I’ve versus what I had with Gwen is we could not get any relays to state. I’ve the group to help Mackenzie and the aim is to get all three relays within the prime eight within the Division 3 state meet this 12 months.”

Contact Brian Calloway at bcalloway@lsj.com. Follow him on X @brian_calloway and Bluesky @briancalloway.