“He’s going to lap them,” muttered Justin Lee, a student at Pasadena Poly, from a crowd of awed spectators. “At a CIF final. He’s going to lap them.”
Disbelief suspended for minutes after Maurer’s final time in the 500-meter freestyle flashed on the board at the Southern Section finals Friday night, spectators chattering about the senior as if he were some sort of demigod.
And, yes, the Loyola senior and top-ranked Stanford commit was simply trying to earn points for his team, as any good swimmer would, but this was bigger.
This meet was never really about racing the eight swimmers next to him. It was about racing the guy who sat on top of history.
A year ago, Maurer swam the 400 next to former Stanford All-American and Team USA member Grant Shoults at the Fran Crippen Swim Meet of Champions at Mission Viejo. It was Shoults’ last race in a dominant swim career. And afterward Shoults gave Maurer his swim cap.
“I think you can take down my record,” Maurer remembered Shoults telling him. “So go get ’em.”
On Friday, Maurer grabbed the torch, in fact nearly lapping another swimmer, as he completed his final lap in the Division 1 500 with an eye-popping time of 4 minutes 12.70 seconds — a hair faster than Shoults’ 2016 time of 4:12.87 while at Santa Margarita.
He pumped his left fist after touching the wall, raising his other to the sky as he roared toward the Loyola supporters.
“As a human being and a leader,” coach Kevin Mann said earlier in the week, “he’s been unbelievable for us.”
He’s the latest from a powerhouse swim family to break a record. His brother, Luke, is an All-American at Stanford; his father, Erik, an NCAA champion at Stanford; his mother, Lea, an Olympic champion and current USC swim assistant.
You wouldn’t know it if you walked into their home. There’s just a few photos on the wall of Maurers swimming. Lea’s Olympic medals, Erik said with a laugh, are in a sock drawer.
But their pride in Rex, the top recruit in the class of 2023, is clear.
“It’s been a hard week,” Erik said after Rex’s first win Friday in the 200-meter freestyle, choking through the words, eyes red.
Maurer’s mentality was there Friday. His body, not quite. Last Saturday, he tried walking down the stairs to practice and felt so ill he, essentially, turned around and slept the rest of the weekend. He still couldn’t get out of bed Monday. He was on antibiotics for the preliminaries Wednesday.
But this was a kid who, at 5, was so bored of getting dragged to Luke’s youth meets that he demanded he compete at the next race. And now he was ready to join his brother at Stanford, and he had a week left to make history.
“Especially with the high school team, it’s my last year,” Maurer said, when asked his mentality. “Just trying to do it for them.”
And trying to do it for history too.