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There’s no simple way for Max Jaben to explain what transpired in the last year and a half.
The short story goes something like this. After distinguishing himself with the Kansas City Blazers club swim team, he lasted a couple of years at the University of Florida before all but giving up the sport.
He avoided the pool for four months, gained 20 pounds and found his swim career in dire need of a fresh start — though at the time, he wasn’t even sure he wanted one.
That was late 2006. … This summer, he’ll swim for Israel at the Olympics in Beijing.
There is, of course, a long version to the story, as well.
Jaben, a 2004 Blue Valley High School graduate, settles into a booth at a café in Leawood and starts from the beginning.
“I had quite a journey,” he says, waiting for his lunch and beginning a story that will take most of the next hour.
Between bites, he tells a tale that led him from running around in a Tiger suit as the student mascot at Blue Valley football games to following his swimming aspirations through Gainesville, Fla., Columbia, Mo., Israel, Mexico, much of Europe, South Africa and ultimately this summer to Beijing and the Olympics.
“I feel like it’s been hard to keep my feet on the ground,” he says now. “I accomplished a goal I’ve been dreaming about since I was 4 or 5 years old. And to accomplish something that you dream about every evening when you go to bed, or when you blow out (candles on) your birthday cake, to come true, words can’t describe it.”
Especially when, not long ago, it all seemed so far away.
•••
Jaben was 6 or 7 years old when he joined the Blazers — the heralded Kansas City area swim club that has produced five other Olympians. By 13, swimming was Jaben’s life, and he was making the most of it.
To this day, he holds several Blazers records in various age-group categories.
“He was our No. 1 male by far during that era,” says Peter Malone, Blazers head coach and general manager.
Malone is close friends with Gregg Troy, the head swimming coach at the University of Florida. The Gators have one of the top swim programs in the country. And Jaben was full of talent.
The equation seemed perfect, so Jaben decided his swim career would continue in Gainesville. He begins the story here.
“I was 18 years old when I made the decision,” says Jaben, 22. “… I got a scholarship to the University of Florida. I was like, ‘Whoa, things cannot go wrong.’ And reality set in.”
After two years with the Gators, things had gone wrong, as far as Jaben was concerned. He found more collegiate success as a sophomore than he had in his first season at Florida, but there were problems outside of the pool.
“The coach and I had issues, and I probably made a couple mistakes as a freshman that I know better now,” he says. “It was just a bunch of things.
“… Coach tells you to do something, and it doesn’t necessarily work for every athlete. I was told that method was the only method that works. I was saying ‘It’s not working.’ And when you tell a coach that, there’s going to be a conflict.”
Malone says there were concerns from the coach’s perspective, as well.
“The only thing I know is that if Max was going to continue to swim, he needed to look for another opportunity,” Malone says.
Jaben wasn’t quite sure he wanted to, though. Early in his junior year, he thought about just being a regular college student and giving up swimming. For a while, that’s exactly what he did.
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