Three members of the Sedona Race Pace Swim Club will be making waves at the collegiate level in the fall. 19-year-old Carlos Lattanzi will be swimming in NCAA Division I at California State University Bakersfield on a partial scholarship. 18-year-old Bryce Kirk will be swimming at the University of Puget Sound, a Division III private school in Tacoma, Wash., to study business on a full scholarship. 17-year-old Leo Wesley will be studying aviation at Henderson State University, a Division II school in Arkadelphia, Ark., and swimming as a walk-on.

“They’re all going be fantastic in college and I can’t wait to see what their college careers bring,” Race Pace Club coach JodiThornton said. “I’m excited to have them as adults out in the world. They’re going to bring good things to the world. They’re going to be missed here because I love having the leadership on the team they bring, and that can be an example for the younger swimmers.”

Carlos Lattanzi

Lattanzi will be relocating to California after a gap year working as a lifeguard and as a coach for the Sedona Masters 18-and-up swim group. He decided  to go to Bakersfield after falling in love with the campus during a visit in early February.

“I’ll be studying kinesiology, so exercise science and physical education,” Lattanzi said. “I see myself using that for physical training and be a personal trainer and I can apply that to coaching or becoming a teacher.”

Lattanzi added that the fall will likely see him specializing in the individual medley, an event that combines the four main strokes of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. “I’ll be doing 400 individual medley, 500-yard freestyle and then potentially even the distance races,” Lattanzi said.

“When I was younger, I probably complained about most practices, saying that they’re hard or difficult,” Lattanzi said. “But thanks to the coaches I come into it with a positive mindset. While I know that, yeah, the practice is going to be hard. But there’s nothing I can do about [that], the best I can do is have a positive mindset and do the best I can.”

Bryce Kirk

The combination of the beauty of Tacoma and the University of Puget Sound’s business program stood out to Kirk when he was doing a tour of universities in the Pacific Northwest after competing at a swim meet in Idaho. He said that he decided on business after thinking about becoming an attorney and opening his own firm, and that when he thought about it more, “the concept of owning a firm sounded more interesting to me than the law part.”

“A couple of months later, I applied for the business leadership program and I got in,” Kirk said. “Because it’s kind of like a sub-program within the college. There’s only a few people that are in it. But it’s cool, you get to all live on the same floor in the same dorm and you’re always interacting with the other people in the program. So you get to build connections and build relationships with those people.”

Kirk stated that the events he will be specializing in at college will probably be the 200-meter butterfly, the 400-meter individual medley and the 500-meter freestyle.

“Those are hard events, but they’re the ones I’m good at,” Kirk said. “The 400 is tough, because it’s long, and you have to be in proficient all the strokes and it’s the longest IM event. The 500 freestyle is an event people don’t complain a lot about but you have to have the endurance or you can end up hurting yourself in that race. The 200 butterfly, that’s a pretty dreaded event for most people. But I’ve always loved swimming it, because I would go to meets and nobody else would be swimming it because they didn’t want to, and I would always place high. I found a niche that nobody wanted to do, but I was willing to do and I ended up thriving.”

Leo Wesley

“I’m proud of how Wesley has developed himself over the last two years,” Thornton said. “He just puts 100% effort in every day, he shows a lot of leadership qualities and he’s always ready to help with pulling covers [off the pool or] anything that needs to be done, helping the younger swimmers.”

Wesley embarked on his swimming journey two years ago when he joined the varsity swim team at Sedona Red Rock High School with Lattanzi’s encouragement.

“I think it’s really only the beginning because I have a lot more in me,” Wesley said. “I fell in love with the personal side but also the team aspect. You’re with a team but you’re doing it for yourself, too, everyday you’re competing against yourself and trying to get better. But at the end of the day, what really matters is how far you’ve come as an individual and how much you’re improving. It’s yourself against yourself.”

Wesley said he plans to become a pilot and that he’ll be close to his extended family at Henderson State University.

“Obviously it will be a job, it’ll be something that I feel like I can enjoy, not just for the money,” Wesley said. “I feel like it’ll be fun. My dad has his private pilot’s license. I did a bit of flight training but it was just too expensive, so I wanted to focus more on school and sports. But now that I have [this] opportunity I’m really excited.”

“I’m a little bit sad to see them go, because the pool’s going to [feel] a bit emptier next year,” Race Pace Club coach Sean Emery said. “But I’m sure they’ll come back and swim during the break.”