At 5, Blake Pieroni wanted to be nowhere near the pool.
The boy’s father, Christopher Pieroni, an age-group coach, enjoyed a successful prep career at Portage and swam at Purdue.
The boy’s mother, Cathy, was a member of U.S. Masters Swimming, and his sister, April, was a swimmer at Merrillville High School. Swimming was in the fabric of this family. But not for the boy. At least not right away.
But 15 years later, Blake Pieroni finds himself in Rio de Janeiro as a member of the U.S. Olympic team. He is expected to compete Sunday in the preliminary heats of the 400-meter freestyle relay.
“When Blake was born and just did not like the water, it was really weird,” his father said. “He came from a swimming background but didn’t like to swim at all. He was afraid of the water.”
That started to change at age 7, when his parents enrolled him in a learn-to-swim program at Union Township. He swam there for a year, then joined age-group swimming in Portage, where his father was the coach.
“We tried him out in a bunch of sports — baseball, football, soccer — but the more we pushed him in swimming and the more I developed his stroke, he just loved it,” Christopher Pieroni said. “We took him to a bunch of swim camps across the United States, and he just excelled.”
After swimming for his dad in Portage, Pieroni went back to Union Township for another stint of age-group swimming. He eventually transferred to the Chesterton school district in middle school. He graduated from Chesterton High School in 2014.
From there, Pieroni really took off. He first qualified for an age-group state championship when he was 14. That summer he made his first big splash by racking up five firsts and winning nearly all of his events at the long course state meet.
“He was always one of the top kids, but he was never an elite kid until he was 14,” Duneland Swim Club coach Jim Voss said. “That’s when he really started blossoming into what we knew was going to be an elite swimmer, but obviously when you’re looking at everybody that’s put a suit on, less than 1 percent make the Olympic team. The odds are pretty stacked against you.”
Pieroni, a biology major at Indiana University, beat those odds when he placed sixth in the 100 free at the U.S. Olympic trials earlier this year with a personal-best time of 48.78 seconds to earn his spot in Rio.
“When you’re young, most swimmers have the idea that being an Olympian would be awesome,” Pieroni said. “It’s that childish dream of wanting to be an astronaut or wanting to do something outrageous, but they don’t know what it would take to accomplish that. I did have the dream, but I didn’t know what it would take. It’s not just a straight path with everything that goes into it.”
After the Olympic trials, Pieroni returned home to decompress for five days. Then it was on to San Antonio for the team’s first training camp and Atlanta for the second camp. On Monday, the team flew to Rio in advance of Friday’s opening ceremony.
More Top Picks Best Chicken Coop Heaters For Winter
“From the veterans that have been to multiple Olympics, I’ve heard it’s not as nerve-wracking as the trials,” Pieroni said. “It’s a chance to learn from the experience. After the race is over, I know I’ll look back and be happy with everything that happened.”
Brandon Vickrey is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.