Katie McLaughlin’s comeback from a neck injury will be among the storylines at the TYR Fran Crippen Memorial Swim Meet of Champions this weekend in Mission Viejo.
The Mission Viejo Nadadores and U.S. national team swimmer fractured two vertebrae – her C6 and C7 – in her lower neck at a training camp with the Cal women’s team in January in Hawaii, her mother, Mary, said.
McLaughlin, 18, left Cal in March to continue her rehabilitation and train with the Nadadores for the U.S. Olympic Trials, June 26-July 3, in Omaha, Neb. She is entered in six events this weekend.
“I feel good,” McLaughlin said via Twitter earlier this week. “Just going to go have fun and see where I’m at.”
The Swim Meet of Champions begins Thursday at the Marguerite Recreation Center at 5 p.m. with two distance events and continues through Sunday with finals each night at 5.
McLaughlin, a Santa Margarita graduate, is seeded first in the 200-meter butterfly (Friday), second in the 100 freestyle (Friday), second in the 200 freestyle (Saturday) and first in the 100 butterfly (Sunday). She also entered the 50 free (Saturday) and 100 backstroke (Sunday).
She returned from her neck injury at the Pac-12 Championships in late February but didn’t race her complete schedule and missed qualifying for the NCAA championships.
Last summer, McLaughlin’s stock soared as she helped the U.S. women capture gold in the 800 free relay at the FINA World Championships in Russia. But with the U.S. Olympic Trials set to begin in about two months, McLaughlin isn’t ranked with the top U.S. women so far this year.
She isn’t the only Orange County contender coming off an injury. Olympian and world-record holder Jessica Hardy, who sustained a concussion at a recent meet in Mesa, Arizona, will return at Mission Viejo, said Mark Schubert, her coach with Golden West Swim Club.
“She has recovered and is training well,” he said in an e-mail of Hardy, ranked third in the United States this year in the 100 breaststroke.
Also entered in the meet: Cal’s Tom Shields (Edison), the Nadadores’ Stephanie Peacock and Ous Mellouli (Tunisia Olympian), Canyons Aquatic’s Abbey Weitzeil (Saugus), Olympian Haley Anderson and a strong group from USC. Santa Margarita’s Grant Shoults leads O.C. high school standouts in the meet.
