Something He Really Loves

“I’ve been serious about it all my life,” says Max Kunisaki ’25, who has been swimming competitively since he was about 6 years old. He likes the discipline the sport requires, an unlikely position for a teenager who has to get up for 7 a.m. club practices on Saturdays and Sundays, as well as 6 a.m. swims on Tuesdays and Thursdays — and that’s in addition to two-hour practices after school every weekday. “It challenges me to push myself. It teaches me how to live.” The senior, who started his Gilman journey in sixth grade when his family relocated to Baltimore from Michigan, says grinding through practices — always with the goal to get faster and to get his name on the record board that hangs by Gilman’s pool — makes other challenges in life seem easy by comparison. Swimming “makes me more confident in everything I do.”

Kunisaki made Gilman’s varsity swim team as a freshman, though he says he “wasn’t that great” back then. He placed 13th and 10th in his events at the championship meet that year. Head Varsity Coach Vaughan Smith says he’s noticed over the years that freshmen who make varsity, while technically qualified based on their times, can become “like a deer in headlights” while competing with students several years older than them at the championships. In club meets where swimmers are grouped by age, competitors are not used to the potentially large gap in age and size among them. Since Smith has realized this tendency, he tries to build confidence in his younger swimmers. “I tell them, ‘Don’t be intimidated; you belong here.’”

If Kunisaki wasn’t sure about his place on the team back then, it became extremely obvious a couple years later. At a meet during his junior year in early 2024, he had been preparing to set a school record in the 50-yard freestyle but finished one-tenth of a second too late. He channeled the frustration and disappointment he felt at the close miss when he swam the 500-yard freestyle next, setting a new school record of 4 minutes, 32.75 seconds, breaking one that had stood since 1986. 

At the MIAA Championship meet a few weeks later, he continued his record-breaking streak in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:41.28 as well as the 200-yard and 400-yard freestyle relays with times of 1:25.63 and 3:06.13, respectively. (The 400 team, which also included Jackson Heether ’25, Yarus Mystak ’24, and Bogdan Mystak ’26, earned them All-American status for that event.) He smiles as he recalls not only setting the record in the 400 relay but also winning the event — a notable feat, as Gilman had not performed well in that event historically.