Fourteen months ago, Sean Steele graduated from Palisades High having helped the Dolphins win two City Section swim titles.
Now the native Palisadian has done the same thing at Emory University in Atlanta. The 2016 Pali High graduate swam distance this year for the Eagles, who won the men’s NCAA Division III national championship for the first time in the program’shistory.
Steele, who attended Calvary Christian School from kindergarten through 8th grade, was on the Pali High swim team for two years and trained for four years with Team Santa Monica (TSM). He was recruited by Emory and the rest is history.
Now entering his sophomore year, Steele just flew to Thailand to begin training and to take part incommunity service at the ViengPing Children’s Home. Among the cities the Emory team will visit are Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket. Included in the trip will be a boat tour of the legendary Chap Phraya River, a guided trek through the hill country of Chiang Mai and canoeing and scuba diving in Phuket.
Steele chose Emory for its strong academics, particularly in biology, medicine and liberal arts.
He clocked a personal-best 4:45.51 in the 500 freestyle Dec. 1 at the Miami Invitational. His PR of 10:07.11 in the 1000 freestyle came in January in a meet against Delta State; his PR of 16:28.18 in the 1650 freestyle was achieved in December at the SCAD Invitational; his PR of 2:08.71 in the 200 backstroke came Jan. 14 against Birmingham-Southern; his PR of 2:35.06 in the 200 breastroke came in October against Queens University; and he recorded his personal-best time of 4:17.17 in the 400 individual medley in December at the SCAD Invitational.
In the summer of 2013, Steele joined Sunset Mesa resident and 2016 Olympian Jordan Wilimovsky at the Flowers Sea Swim in the Cayman Islands, competing in the one mile and 10K events. The one-mile featured 900 swimmers and Steele placed 11th overall with a time of 18:35.99. In the 10K, he was ninth out of 30 swimmers in 2:19:55.30.
One month earlier, Steele took second in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:49 for Palisades in the City swim finals at East Los Angeles College.
Steele also swam in the 2015 Speedo Sectional Championships.
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