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Hyacks' Lau eager to test NCAA waters

When first put in the pool, New Westminster Secondary's Octavia Lau wasn’t keen. To be frank, she downright disliked it. It was her older brother’s thing, and she just wasn’t enjoying the time submerged in the water.
Octavia Lau
Burnaby’s Octavia Lau has set a host of club records and spent last summer as a member of the Canadian junior swim team. Now, the Hyack Swim Club member is looking to a future as a student-athlete at the University of Michigan.

When first put in the pool, New Westminster Secondary's Octavia Lau wasn’t keen. To be frank, she downright disliked it.

It was her older brother’s thing, and she just wasn’t enjoying the time submerged in the water.

But now when she emerges from a practice and looks to the future, the teen is glad her parents made her take the plunge.

The sport is leading Lau to the next big challenge, which is as a student-athlete at the University of Michigan.

“I actually highly disliked it when I was young, I was like five years old and I just kind of got into it because of my older brother (Xavier),” she recalls. “Whatever he was put in, I was put in as well. I at first didn’t like it, but I gradually started to get some results and I started falling in love when I was six or seven.”

Those results were just the tip of the iceberg, as Lau charted a course nationally and internationally – including last year as a member of the Canadian junior swim team.

Getting to dip her toes in international meets only stoked her thirst to try the NCAA waters.

The Hyack Swim Club member has shown through various meets that new frontiers are nothing to worry about.

At the Ontario junior international meet last December, she registered the top Canadian time in the 400-metre freestyle, only bettered by three top British swimmers. At the same meet, she won the 1500m free and scored silver in the 800m free, posting a faster second half than the winner.

The NWSS student has thrived over the past six months, building on club records and her own national standing. In the Canadian long course rankings, Lau sits first in the 400-, 800- and 1500m free events. She holds the same three positions in the short course versions as well, with a three-day meet in Toronto last December where she nailed her best times.

It’s a long way from when she finally caught the swimming bug, hitting the water with the Burnaby Barricudas and then the Burnaby Mountain Mantas summer clubs.

“I started seeing results, placing on the podium or personal best times and that was a lot of fun to see. As I progressed and swam older, I started making national teams or swimming world-wide basically.”

It carried her to Fiji and Israel last summer as part of the Canadian junior team. She began by placing ninth in the 800m free at the Junior Pan Pacific championships in Fiji, then competed in the 7.5-kilometre 16-17 women’s open water event World Junior championships in Israel.

This year, she was a recipient of a Victor Davis Memorial Award, including a $1,500 bursary, which recognizes her accomplishments and impact in the pool.

As her Hyack Swim Club coach sees it, Lau has an ability to focus on exactly what she needs to get done in each race.

“She’s always been ranked highly (in Canada) in all her events, either at the top or top four. When you’re in that position of always being in the top, the outcome of the race is different,” noted Mark Bottrill. “You are expecting to win. As you get older and wiser, you go from just training to training to win. She has to take that next step, and that’s what (coaches at Michigan) will be working on.”

With a regimen that sees her hitting the pool for 24 hours a week, 48 weeks of the year, her dedication is a plus. It’s going to be helpful as she shifts to a different world, with new coaches, new teammates and new challenges as a freshman in the NCAA.

“(A scholarship) is like such a big help for my family, and it’s been such a dream to swim down in the States, where I’m going,” she says. “It’s been such a wild ride, with the help of the school and my family, and, hopefully, I’ll have a real good four years down there.”

She gives a lot of the credit to her coaches, Hyacks’ Andrew Lennstrom and Bottrill, on guiding her onto this new path.

“They really pushed me to train harder, to race harder. ... I just thank my coaches (Bottrill and Lennstrom) and both of them have been such a big help, not only with my swimming, but my private life as well.”

Bottrill, who has seen a lot of great swimmers over 31 years of coaching, anticipates the challenges of the NCAA, where she is joining the No. 2-ranked program in the nation, will not dissuade Lau from her goals.

“She likes to race and the NCAA programs have far more dual matches that Canadian universities. There’ll be more opportunities to compete. There’s going to be adversity but she’s not one to shy away (from it),” Bottrill says.

That’s part of the excitement she’s eager to embrace, Lau says.

“It’s always a big challenge, but I’m up for it. It’s like, juggling school and swimming have been hard, but I’ll make do.”