Dan Trupin has dominated Illinois swimming from afar this winter.
On Friday the rest of the state will see firsthand how good this Champaign Central senior is when the 70th annual boys state swimming finals open at New Trier.
“He can swim every stroke, he can swim every distance,” said Champaign Central coach Jeff Trigger. “He’s a great kid in practice, a great worker, has a good attitude and is humble about his achievements.”
The 17-year-old Trupin has swum the state’s fastest times in six of eight individual events this winter. That includes the two he’ll swim at state as he goes for his third straight 200-yard individual medley title and first 100-yard butterfly title.
“I don’t really like to make predictions,” said Trupin while taking a break from a light workout at the Champaign Centennial High School pool, a facility shared by the community’s two high schools. “But I would say I’d definitely like to do best times and maybe go after some of the state records.”
Records are a distinct possibility. He scored state-best sectional times in both events, and his 200 individual time was nearly three seconds faster than the next closest qualifier’s.
But Trupin, who has three individual state championships to his credit, is taking nothing for granted.
“Illinois swimming is very fast, so the high school meet is not just another meet,” he said. “In the individual medley, I [might be able to] back off in the prelims, but I don’t think I can do that in the butterfly. There are so many fast people in the butterfly, and everybody’s trying to get in the top six for finals, so I’m going to have to go pretty hard in the preliminaries.”
Trupin is no stranger to elite competition. He has participated in numerous national and international meets with his club team, the Champaign County Aqua Chiefs. At last summer’s U.S. Olympic trials, he reached the 200-meter individual medley finals and took seventh.
Although Champaign Central makes few trips north, Chicago-area coaches and swimmers are well aware of Trupin’s exploits.
“He’s one of the best pure swimmers to come through Illinois in a long time,” said Marmion coach Bill Schalz, whose team won state last year. “He’s got four great strokes, and he’s certainly capable of winning any event he swims.
“He’s a mega-talent.”
Trupin also is an excellent student, ranked in the top 5 percent of his class and a member of the National Honor Society. Last fall he was named a Scholastic All-American by USA Swimming, the sport’s governing body. Next fall he’s bound for Stanford, where, he said, he may study medicine or science.
“I think Stanford has one of the best combinations of athletics and academics possible,” he said.
Trupin finished the regular season with the top times in all four freestyle events as well as the 100-yard butterfly and the 200-yard individual medley. He was second in the 100-yard backstroke and third in the 100-yard breaststroke.
He cut more than a second off his previous best showing in the 200-yard IM, swimming it in 1 minute 49.66 seconds at Saturday’s sectionals, only a second off the state record he set last year.
Trupin’s 100-yard butterfly time of 0:49.77 is about two-tenths of a second short of the state mark and slightly ahead of that of Naperville North’s Peter Boumgarden, who swam a career-best 0:50.76 at sectionals. He’ll also swim on three relays, including a 400-yard freestyle relay that has the state’s fifth-fastest qualifying time.
Trupin, a swimmer since he was 6, comes from a strong swimming background. His father and two aunts were collegiate swimmers so, he says, “It’s kind of natural that I swim.”
