DV mens varsity swimmer Tim Wu is a junior and UC Berkeley swim commit. He sat down with the Tribune to talk about his almost decade-long swim journey, marked by supportive teammates and coaches, close races and hours of practice.
Wu is currently second in California and twelfth in the nation for the class of 2026 on Swimcloud, a website that tracks swimmers’ performance at meets and calculates rankings based on their best races. Wu competes for the Pleasanton Seahawks swim club year-round and Dougherty’s varsity team in the spring. However, his swim journey started nearly a decade earlier, back when he was 8 years old and living in China.
When Wu first started, “I was not even competitive,” he said. “It was me kind of just floating in the pool and I just kind of liked it. [I realized] that’s what I feel like I’m gonna be doing.”
He moved to the US at the age of 10. After adjusting to US pools, which he noted often use yards instead of the typical meters, he began swimming competitively with the Pleasanton Seahawks. Wu has swum there for six years, moving up to the Senior Elite group when he was 14. He says that his favorite stroke is freestyle, but that he swims a little bit of everything except breaststroke.
“One thing I enjoy about swimming is that it’s a competitive sport where you get to interact with your teammates and your competitors on an everyday basis because you have so many swim meets,” Wu said. “You get to push yourself every day in practice and push yourself beyond your limits to improve. So I feel like that’s one of the reasons why I chose swimming. And then you don’t have to be at a risk to get injured, like many other sports, so that’s another reason that I like the sport.”
However, Wu also acknowledged the challenges that come with being a competitive swimmer.
“Swimming, it’s a pretty hard sport, because we’ve got 10 practices a week. We’ll have morning practices on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and then we have afternoon [practices] Monday through Saturday,” he said. “We’ll be in the pool at 4 a.m. in the morning before the sun comes up and then we’ll come to school and we’ll go back to the pool at 3 p.m.”
In addition to the roughly 20 hours per week Wu dedicates in total to swim practice, he must be at the outdoor pool rain or shine.
“When the weather is cold, it’s raining, we still have practice,” Wu said. He added mildly, “East Coast, at least the pools will be indoors. In California, they don’t like indoor pools. We have outdoor pools out here.”
Furthermore, Wu must work school around his swimming life, whether that be tests he misses due to meets or even just everyday assignments.
“It’s pretty hard balancing school work and swim. We have to make time during our periods to just try to get homework done during school hours so we don’t have to go home and try to cram more work in, so we can go to bed early and get rest for tomorrow’s practice,” Wu said. “It’s also really hard to communicate with your teachers since sometimes you’ll be out for a whole week for some swim meet out there in North Carolina. You would have to communicate with the teachers to try to work something out about your tests, your work.”
Despite these challenges, Wu finds swimming enjoyable and has many people around to support his path. He shouted out his parents, who drive him to and from practice twice nearly every day and spend whole days cheering him on at meets. He also mentioned his coach, Steve Morsilli, who founded the Pleasanton Seahawks in 1982 and has coached a handful of past USA Swimming National and National Junior Team members.
“Every time we go out to one of the meets that we have to fly out for and book a hotel for, if it’s a big meet, our coach will actually cover the expenses. He’ll book our flights, he’ll book our hotel, and then he’ll rent a car there so we don’t have to really worry about anything like that, so we can just go to the meet,” he recalled appreciatively.
Morsilli appreciates having Wu as one of his athletes as well.
“He is fairly quiet, but has a great sense of humor when he speaks up,” Morsilli said. “It has been and continues to be a lot of fun working with him.”
Wu also noted the tight bond he’s built with his teammates at Pleasanton Seahawk, including Foothill sophomore Luka Mijatovic — a member of the 2024-25 USA Swimming National Junior Team and the No. 1 swimmer in the class of 2027 on Swimcloud — who he describes as having supported him greatly throughout his career so far.
“We grow up together. [I] spend 20 hours a week with my teammates, so we’re really close to each other, especially some of the guys. We’ve been all together for four to five years by now,” Wu explained. “So we’re really good friends, and we’re all really supportive of each other during the swim process.”
He highlighted the camaraderie he’s built with his swim friends as something very important to him, sharing that although he didn’t make the “cut” time to advance to the next round at the last meet of the season last year, that day remains one of his favorite memories because of the support his teammates and coach gave him. He emphasized that to him, his team is essentially family.
“The most special thing about swimming is how close the teammates get. Like I said, we spend 20 hours a week practicing. It’s crazy how close we get and how comfortable we get with each other,” Wu said.
Ben Ohrr, one of Wu’s Pleasanton Seahawk teammates and a current senior at Dublin High, described Wu as always being able to keep the team motivated and in good spirits.
“I think in practice he’s definitely a big leader. Not only by setting an example, but he’s also there to encourage other people; everyone’s always trying to race him and he helps everyone to become better just by being there,” Ohrr said. “At competitions as well, he’s really mature. He’s always keeping us in check and helping us to perform our best, so he’s just really helpful as a teammate to be there and give advice to all of us, and he’s a really good person.”
Ohrr mentioned a specific Saturday morning that exemplified his comments. At that time every week, the Senior Elite group holds a race-style practice in order to simulate a meet.
“Tim’s always there, and he’s trying to cheer us up between each of the races that we do. It stands out to me, that one time, because everyone was just dead because we had a really hard meet before, but he was just there cracking jokes,” said Ohrr. He recollected, “Our coach likes to say stuff like ‘What car are you driving today, are you a garbage truck or are you a Ferrari?’ So [Tim] was just there cracking jokes, like ‘Do you really want to be a garbage truck right now?’ Stuff like that.”
At 16, Wu already has several accomplishments under his belt: for instance, he won the 100 fly and 200 IM (Individual Medley) at the 2024 CIF North Coast Section Championships, and placed third and fourth at those respective events at the 2024 CIF State Championships. However, he said that he recalls his performance during the 100 fly event at a Western Zones championship meet when he was 14 as one of his most memorable achievements.
“I was going in, it’s one of the last meets of the season, and I was going for a cut that I didn’t reach the whole entire season,” Wu remembered. “It’s the last meet. I kind of just went for it. I touched the wall, I got the cut by like half a second. That was one of the happiest times.”
Wu’s teammates and coach highlight his diligence and commitment to his sport.
“Tim leads the group by example with his work ethic in practice and meets,” Morsilli said. “He pays attention to direction and makes changes and adjustments as necessary. He always gives 100 percent effort in practice and has outstanding attendance. He deserves the recognition for the work he does and what he has achieved so far.”
Ohrr agreed, saying, “Honestly, I think Tim is the hardest worker in the group, most definitely. He is the most detail-oriented. Whether it be about his stroke or whatnot, he’s the most focused in practice, and I’ve never seen anyone who really just works as hard. He definitely has incredible talent, but his work ethic is what just sets him apart.”
As for being a junior UC Berkeley commit, Wu was excited about the opportunity.
“There’s not a lot of opportunities for us to go to such high-end schools like this, especially Berkeley, such a great swimming school,” he said. “I went to a visit there. Everybody there was just super nice. It’s close to my house, so that’s why I chose Berkeley, and it feels pretty good.”
Wu’s ongoing swim journey has been multidimensional, with challenges as well as rewards.
“You have to focus on every single bit of your technique, every day; how you rest, what you eat, what you put in your body. And the part I like, it’s that everybody does their thing a little bit different,” he said. “You compete with other swimmers in your age [group], and you learn from them and get better.”
