Mercury All-Area: Owen J. Roberts’ Logan Richards comes from ‘out of nowhere’ to become District 1-record holder and state champion

As Logan Richards stepped up to the block at the PIAA championships last month for the 500-yard freestyle, the competitor in the lane next to him asked a question those who followed high school swimming this season also wanted an answer to.

“Where did you come from?” Governor Mifflin senior Ben Gerhard, who entered the season as the top returner in the event, asked Richards, who was in his state championship debut.

Richards followed up a sophomore season that saw him not qualify for the postseason with a breakout junior campaign that ended with him besting Gerhard for state gold.

His ability to surprise those in the swimming world and even himself earned him the Mercury All-Area Boys Swimmer of the Year.

“It really came out of nowhere,” Richards said. “I was not expecting to win a state championship or win districts for that matter because last year I didn’t even qualify for the 500 free and this year I won with a district record.

“I had the goal for myself, and I knew somewhere I had the potential to do it, but I didn’t know it was going to be this soon and this year.”

Mercury All-Area: 2021-22 Boys Swimming Teams

Since he jumped into the pool and started swimming around age 7 or 8 people have told Richards that he ‘swims different than everybody else,’ he said.

He’s tall, powerfully built and his movements in the water make him a perfect fit for long-distance race.

“He’s probably one of the most efficient swimmers I’ve ever seen,” Owen J. Roberts co-head coach Kevin Bott said. “Every stroke seems to have the same power and pull to it and he just glides through the water with ease. Not to mention he’s an extremely hard worker.”

Upon arriving at Owen J. Roberts, the Wildcats’ coaching staff instilled confidence in Richards and reaching high school swimming’s peak has always been among his ambitions.

But after he was a District 1 qualifier in the 500 free as a freshman in 2020, finishing 32nd (4:56.42), he didn’t make the cut in a reduced field as a sophomore, so he entered the 2022 season quite off the radar.

Richards, who’s dedicated himself to the sport since about age 13, said he ramped things up a notch last offseason. Getting back into a full training regiment with things more normal last offseason, Richards said he only took about a week off during the summer.

“I definitely got stronger and lifted a lot more this year,” Richards said. “I’ve been doing double practices, a lot more training. My trainings’ definitely been a lot more serious this year.”

Swimming with the Phoenixville YMCA, Richards said he started dropping time in his first club meet. Things really started to click when he dropped five seconds during one club meet in November, putting him below OJR’s school-record mark.

“It was that one club meet that I really realized,” Richards said. “I think the big reason was I started to swim the race differently. I’m starting to get comfortable with starting to take the race out fast. I used to get too in my head that, ‘I’m going to go out too fast, and I’m going to die in the end,’ but now I’m starting to get more comfortable about going out with everyone else, and I always have the back half speed, so I use that to my advantage and I just take off.”

Richards began making a name for himself at the high-school level early this winter.

He earned both the team and pool records in the 500 free by the team’s sixth meet of the season, and held both marks in the 200 by the end of a regular season that saw the Wildcats go undefeated and win their first outright Pioneer Athletic Conference championship since 2017-18.

Bott’s co-head coach Chris Burns said Richards studied tape to improve. He watched college swimming races and found some of the top international swimmers to see how they attacked the 500.

Burns and Richards spent time studying his own tape to see how he could best approach the race.

“This year, he really became a student of the game,” Burns said. “I would record a lot of his meets or have our team manager record a lot of his races and then he’d come into my classroom and we’d kind of break things down between the flags and even on his starts and his turns. He studied everything that he did throughout the season.

“He had a goal. Last year was really rough for him. He just had a difficult season and this year he came into it ready to go.”

Richards rolled the regular-season momentum into the postseason, winning both the 200 and 500 at the PAC individual championships. His time of 4:36.39 in the 500 broke a 31-year-old pool record (4:39.04) at Perkiomen Valley High School.

“He just kept believing in himself and he set goals for himself that he knew that were possible,” Bott said. “And as he kept getting that momentum and maintaining that momentum and getting more of it as the season went along it’s hard to slow that down. It’s like a basketball team that gets hot right at the right time before the tournament.

“You just get on a roll and he just sort of got on a roll from mid-January on. He’d walk into a pool, look a the record board and go, ‘Can I go for that?’”

Richards came into districts with the top time in the state in the 500 amongst public high school swimmers and held the top seed in both the 200 and 500 in District 1, so some of those goals set at the beginning of his high school career began to become realistically within reach.

On the first day of districts, Richards came from behind to win the 200 free (1:40.56) in a photo finish for his first District 1 gold medal. A day later, he won the 500 free with a time of district-record time of 4:28.76, smashing the previous mark of 4:31.28 set by Kennett’s Emils Jurcik set in 2018 .

“Definitely going into districts I knew I had the fastest time in the state for public schools, so I did have the intention to go in and win, but I didn’t have the intention to go in drop seven seconds and win with a district record,” Richards said. “That was amazing. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Richards still had more left in the tank as the District 1 record did not culminate the spectacular season. Richards went into states seeded third in the 200 free and first in the 500 free. His job was to go into his first states meet and win the whole thing.

He finished sixth in the 200 free (1:41.41) on the first day for his first state medal, finishing behind Perkiomen Valley’s Jacob Replogle in second (1:39.55) and Gerhard in first (1:38.88).

In his final race of the season with Gerhard in the next lane, Richards knocked off time once again, swimming a personal best time of 4:26.93 for a state gold medal, joining Patrick Schirk (2003, 2004, 2005) and Mitchell Scherer (2008) as OJR boys swimmers to win gold since 2000.

“Every time he stepped on the block he just believed that he was going to be successful,” Bott said. “When you have that kind of belief in your self, you can just keep going to new levels and that’s what he did.”

Shining on the state’s biggest stage was quite the turnaround from where Richards was at a season before.

“Last year, I was terrified. I used to get terrified walking up the blocks, and now it’s like nothing just because I’m confident in myself,” Richards said. “Because I know what I can do and I know the other guys next to me are going to push me and all together I’m going to go faster.”

Richards credits Burns and Bott for the workouts they put him through throughout the season. Both coaches noted the junior’s humbleness and work ethic distinguish him from his peers.

“He pushes himself in practice,” Burns said. “He gives 110 percent every single practice, and I never have to ask him to give me more. That’s what also make a great athlete is someone who gives it every thin they’ve got every single practice, and that’s what he does. A lot of the swimmers have really started to emulate him.”

“I was so unbelievably brought of him and getting to put the gold medal around his neck at states is something I’ll never forget. It’s the greatest moment I’ve ever had coaching,” added Burns, who previously coached multiple state champions in Virginia.

Richards finished his high school season at the 2022 Short Course YMCA National Swimming Championship from March 28-April 1 in Greensboro, N.C. where he finished 22nd in the 200 (1:41.52), eighth in the 500 (4:33.92) and second in the 1,000-yard free (9:17.86).

There’s still one more season for Richards to try and see how fast he can go. Every gold medal was a first for him this season, and he has his eyes on adding more to the collection next season.

He also has the state-record time of 4:19.64 among his 2022-23 missions

“Next year definitely I want to go win again, drop more time,” Richards said. “I made All-American this year. I’d like to do that next year. I’d like to win districts again and PACs and be a state champion again, but also go for that state record. … There’s always one step ahead.”