Scott to swim at Junior Nationals

• Reprints

Niles West's Konner Scott celebrates winning his heat of the 100-yard freestyle during the IHSA preliminaries at New Trier.

Updated: November 2, 2011 4:35PM

Like many teenagers heading off to college for the first time, Konner Scott is hoping to have an unforgettable final few weeks of summer.

For the Niles West alum, those memories will be made in a swimming pool in California.

Next week, the University of Pennsylvania-bound star is headed to Palo Alto to compete in the 2011 Speedo Junior National Championships, Aug. 8-12 in the outdoor pool at Stanford University.

This will be Scott’s first time participating in the event after narrowly missing qualifying last summer.

“Junior Nationals was a major goal for him,” said Seth Orlove, who coaches Scott at Skokie-based Swift Aquatics, a first-year club program. “Going to Juniors this summer is kind of icing on the cake. It’s an opportunity for him to get one last meet in before he goes to college. Based on the summer season, he has a little left to give, and I think he feels that way. It’s going to be a great experience for him.”

Scott said the meet will help him gauge where he’s at athletically before he begins his collegiate career.

“I’m just looking forward to (clocking) some best times,” he said. “Last summer, I was trying to make qualifying. Now, it’s about how fast I can swim before college.”

Scott will be swimming four events: 200-meter IM, 100 and 200 freestyles and 100 backstroke.

He registered his qualifying time in the 200 free at last winter’s IHSA State Meet, where he finished third. Scott booked his berth in the 100 back at a sectional meet in late July. The other two events are “bonus events” granted to swimmers who already have made national cuts.

The Junior Nationals do prevent some unique challenges. The events are measured in meters rather than yards, which means slightly longer races.

Also, the pool is Olympic-size instead of the short-course used in high school and collegiate competitions. This means longer lanes and fewer turns, forcing swimmers to use muscle groups differently.

Then there is the location of the pool. Scott has been training at the Oriole Park Pool in Morton Grove to prepare for swimming outdoors, a whole different experience for backstrokers.

“When you’re doing backstroke inside, the ceiling acts as a guide,” said Scott, who also finished fifth in the state in the 100 free last winter. “Outdoors, the sky could be blue and you don’t know where you’re going. The clouds could be moving and throwing you off. You have to learn how to gauge where you are based on your swimming.”

Of course, don’t doubt Scott’s ability to figure it out.

“He’s always thinking about what he can do to get better, analyzing his race and his competitors’ races,” said Orlove, who pointed out that Scott is aware of not only his own times and splits, but those of his competitors and teammates, as well.

None of which should be a surprise given that Scott plans to major in chemical engineering at Penn.

This summer, between two-a-day training sessions, Scott has been working in a laboratory at Northwestern where researchers predict trends using computer programs and statistics. He interned there last summer.

But Scott is not only about heavy training and scholarly pursuits. He’s also is the lead singer and plays guitar in a band called Klorine, which also includes former Niles West swimmers Elliott Kerbel (bass) and Ricky Havansek (drums).

In recent years, the band has been booked for gigs at the high school, at graduation parties and at local fund-raisers and rallies, including Saturday’s Take Back the Night event at Niles West.

Scott said Klorine’s music can be classified as alternative or hard rock, but also includes some acoustic songs. Though all three members will be going their separate ways later this month, they plan to reunite for shows and recording sessions in the summers. Scott said they hope modern technology will allow them to collaborate on songs despite all living at different colleges.

Scott said penning music is quite different than developing racing strategy.

“With swimming you have to stick on a very structured timeline and specific regimen, but music you do in your free time. You can just take out your guitar and mess around,” he said.