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Former Blue Valley student finds his way to Beijing for Olympics
By RYAN YOUNGThe Kansas City Star
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.
The four months away from the pool in the fall and winter of 2006 was the longest period he had gone without training since joining the Blazers. He had gained weight. He had lost confidence in his abilities.
“I hit rock bottom,” says Jaben, looking back. “It was a really hard reality, but I started thinking, ‘I’m just going to work hard on school now. Maybe swimming wasn’t meant for me.’ ”
•••
But, then again, maybe it still was.
Brian Hoffer, the head coach of the Missouri Tigers swim team, was willing to try to find out.
Ironically, as Hoffer recalls, Jaben hadn’t given Missouri much, if any, consideration when he came out of high school. He was a high-profile recruit, and Missouri wasn’t in the same part of the collegiate swimming spectrum. But now, Jaben had been released from his scholarship from Florida and was looking to restart his swim career. Now he was targeting them (along with Texas).
Jaben e-mailed Hoffer, who was well aware of Jaben’s abilities from his Kansas City Blazers days. But it wasn’t that same swimmer, physically or mentally, who showed up in Columbia — not initially, at least.
“I came to them so broken as a swimmer,” Jaben says.
Hoffer says, “We kind of took it one day at a time. We didn’t try to solve all the problems overnight. We really didn’t have any short-term goals. (We said) ‘Let’s get this going, and maybe we can find that love of swimming that maybe wasn’t there.’ ”
Jaben transferred to Missouri and joined the program in January 2007. He wasn’t eligible to compete for the team the rest of the season, but that was fine because he wasn’t ready to compete. He could practice with the Tigers, though, and slowly it started coming back
His times, his passion … and some of his old aspirations.
Before he left Florida, Jaben, who is Jewish, had flirted with the thought of attaining Israeli citizenship and competing for the national team. He was in contact with the national team, yet for reasons he still doesn’t know, he was denied citizenship.
But he started having those thoughts again.
Jaben began competing with Missouri’s club swim team in April and — realizing he was quickly regaining his old form and passion — he decided to compete at the Israeli national meet in August.
As he tells it, he won the 800-meter freestyle and finished well in several other events while competing against the best swimmers in Israel. He swam personal-best times in most of those events. His Israeli citizenship had come to fruition, and after that performance, his spot on the Israeli national team effectively did as well.
He flew home to let everybody — including Hoffer — know that he was taking the year off and moving to Israel. A week later, he was gone.
“I just packed three suitcases full of everything I could and said, ‘All right, I’m moving to Israel,’ ” Jaben says. “This is what I wanted to do.”
•••
It’s been a whirlwind tour since then.
Jaben joined a team in which he was the only swimmer who couldn’t speak Hebrew with a coach who couldn’t speak English. Just another obstacle, though.
He traveled with the team to Mexico City for a month of altitude training. Then to competitions in Holland, Hungary, Belgium, Luxembourg and a month of training in South Africa in February.
That was all leading up to the European Championships, which served as the Olympic qualifying meet, in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in March.
That would prove to be another interesting twist is his long journey.
Truth be told, Jaben says, he was invited to join the Israeli national team primarily to compete on the 800 relay.
“I don’t think the people there even had hopes for me making it individually or even believed that I could,” he says. “But in my head, I thought I could.”
His first attempt was in the 400-meter freestyle. He figured it was his best chance, but he pushed too hard early in the race and struggled to the finish.
“It was pretty much a disaster,” he says.
He’d try again the next morning in the 200 freestyle preliminaries. He needed to place in the top 16 against all of Europe to earn a spot in the semifinals — the first qualifying hurdle.
Jaben posted his best-ever prelim time in the event, and after all the heats were done, his time ranked 18th. But only two swimmers from each country could advance, and four Italians had finished ahead of him. So 18th became 16th, and he was in.
To make the Olympic team, he next had to finish in the top 12 during semifinals and, as per Israeli Olympic Committee standards, he had to be the top Israeli. Another Israeli had finished ahead of him in prelims.
“So I definitely had my work cut out for me,” he says from behind his now-finished plate.
The story is not quite done yet, though.
The semifinals were later that night, and he was the last seed in the first of two heats. He swam a personal-best 1 minute, 49.48 seconds and beat two swimmers for sixth in his heat. That time stood to be faster than three swimmers in the second and final heat — including the fellow Israeli — meaning Jaben was Beijing-bound.
“I definitely caught some lucky breaks, but this is sports,” Jaben says. “You stand at the door, and if it opens, you walk through it.”
He found his opening last winter and has been walking ever since.
“To see how far he came … is phenomenal,” Hoffer says. “It’s not like he had to reinvent himself. He just had to find what was there at one time. But it is remarkable. It’s a remarkable story.”
Malone, having heard both sides of the Florida split, says he was most proud when he received an e-mail from a friend who attended the European Championships.
“I think his quote was best: ‘Max has done a wonderful job. He’s matured and grown up and he’s a fine young gentleman.’ That’s probably more important to me than (him being) an Olympian,” Malone says.
Jaben has readjusted his goals. He doesn’t just want to go to the Olympics — he wants to accomplish something. Maybe make the semifinals.
He’s planning to return to Missouri next school year and expects to have two years of NCAA eligibility remaining when he gets there. His scholarship is waiting for him, too.
He’s not sure what else the future holds or how Israel fits into the rest of his life, but well, he’s learned better than to assume how things will unfold.
“When people ask me,” Jaben says, “I just say, ‘I’m going to go where life takes me.’ ”