Tanner Keeling-Garcia likes to fly in the water and in the skies.
Keeling-Garcia, a junior on the Kentlake boys swim and dive team, is on the verge of getting his private pilot’s license but is also one of the Falcons’ strongest swimmers.
Last year, he finished seventh in the 100-yard butterfly and 14th in the 100-yard breaststroke at the Class 4A state championships.
This year, he is a team captain and leads a group of fast swimmers including sophomore Erik Fulmer, senior co-captain David Dougherty, and junior Kyle Koon.
“Last year our first day we probably had 65 kids here and within two days, half of them disappeared,” Keeling-Garcia said. “That’s not the case this year. A lot of these guys can already swim. I’d say there’s a little bit more community. It’s nice to have a little bit of friendly competition.”
After going undefeated in the South Puget Sound League North Division dual meet season, Keeling-Garcia thinks the Falcons can do well this year, too, especially given the returning swimmers are faster along with added depth in each event.
“I don’t think we’re going to see that many new faces at state, but, at district and league it will be better because we’re looking at more depth,” he said. “With the exception of Tyler (Royal, who graduated) we have our whole varsity relay (teams) back. That is definitely one thing we could do better this year (is relays).”
But, Keeling-Garcia doesn’t spend all of his time thinking about what he does in the pool, despite swimming club with KING Aquatics in addition to high school swim.
In addition to flying — he will get his full license when he turns 17 on Jan. 12 — he snowboards, plays guitar and piano and someday plans to be an engineer.
His parents homeschooled their two children, and Keeling-Garcia’s older sister is now at Carroll College in Montana, while he is already considering places ranging from MIT to Eastern Oregon University.
“I can go with them (when they travel) … and that wouldn’t have worked in any kind of public school,” he said. “My mom and dad felt like they could’ve gotten more out of school, so, they wanted to give us more.”
Keeling-Garcia thinks about things like the advantages and disadvantages of piston and turbine engines while trying to develop a concept that would take the best of both concepts to create something better.
“I designed and built a custom 7 1/2 horsepower pump for a swim-in-place system and did all of the plumbing and electrical for a fully automated heating and filtration system for our new swim spa and hot tub,” Keeling-Garcia said. “When I have spare time on top of that, I’m working on a small hobby ROV to take to Palmyra this summer. I also may enter that in the annual MATE ROVE competition held at KCAC.”
He is interested in engineering that either involves the water or the sky.
And his love of the water is not just about swimming.
Growing up, Keeling-Garcia spent his summers on his parents boat in Alaska during salmon season, and “our boat was the boat that discovered the wreck of the USS Grunion off the coast of Kiska Island using sidescan sonar and ROV with several HD cameras to take video and pictures of everything.”
“When I was younger, we were tendering for salmon (in Alaska),” he said. “For the first 14 years of my life, that was the standard for my summers.”
His parents boat was also used by camera crews from the Discovery Channel in past seasons of the hit reality series, “The Deadliest Catch.”
So, in past winters, his sister and his grandfather have helped him hold down the fort while his parents were gone. He’s cooked and cleaned and done laundry for himself, explaining that he was probably too young to do his own laundry but he did it, anyway.
In addition, he is a certified SCUBA diver and has been diving all over the globe since he was 10, and he has a full motorcycle endorsement and rides a KLR650 “when it’s not raining.”
With all the traveling he’s done, the home schooling experience and the time he’s spent with his sister and grandfather while his parents were working out on the family boat has helped him be able to focus on swimming as well as help him balance everything.
“I was raised to be very independent,” he said. “Because we have to balance so many things, it helps balance club and high school swimming. And it has definitely helped with general life skills. It also helped me devote myself to one thing.”
He is doing his best to juggle school, traveling with his parents, his goals for Kentlake’s boys swim and dive team along with his personal club swimming aspirations — which includes making junior national cuts and helping KING win the senior sectionals this year — while considering where he wants to go to college, squeezing in snowboarding time, music, flying, and all his other pursuits.
But, he also wants to focus on flying in the pool.
Because if Keeling-Garcia is faster than he was a year ago, the Falcons could be flying high again this season.
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