Texas A&M's Omar Enriquez gave his coach a good excuse to give an old buddy a call.
Enriquez, a freshman from Mexico, broke the oldest swimming record in the A&M books two weeks ago against LSU, covering 1,000 yards in 9 minutes, 13.42 seconds to erase Rick Walker's 27-year-old mark of 9:14.17.
A&M swimming coach Jay Holmes witnessed the old mark and felt it was only right to give Walker, his former teammate who is now the swimming coach at Southern Illinois, the heads up about being dethroned.
"Rick was happy about it," Holmes said. "You always like to be remembered, but Rick knows for us to get better that needed to happen."
The 19-year-old Enriquez is no stranger to records. He holds national age group records in the 200 freestyle, 200 individual medley and 400 I.M.
Though still relatively new to Aggieland, Enriquez already had his eye on Walker's 1,000 freestyle record.
"I knew of the record because one of my goals for the season was to break the record, but I wasn't expecting to break it at that meet," Enriquez said. "Some of my times before I came here were pretty close to the record, so I knew if I had a good swim and if I train hard, the records might come."
Enriquez did more than add his name to the record book at the LSU dual meet. He also won the 500 freestyle and took third in the 400 I.M., which he swam despite being sick.
He waited until the next day to tell Homes about it because he knew the Aggies needed points to pull out a close victory over the Tigers, which they did.
"He's one of those guys who, if we need him to race, he's going to race," Holmes said. "He's an aerobic person who can handle a lot of work and he exceeds at that work. We haven't had a lot of guys like that. It's just not very common."
In A&M's following meet at SMU, Enriquez won the 1,000 freestyle and within 2 minutes was back in the pool getting third in the 200 freestyle. Once again Enriquez didn't mind the quick turnaround, for he was able to pick up key points in a dual meet the Aggies won 119-118.
"It gets harder after you swim the 1,000," he said of the turnarounds, "but I do it in training and you get used to pushing yourself hard in training during every practice, so it will be exactly the same in the meet. It's hard, but you would have already pushed yourself to that limit in practice, so you can reach it."
The oldest A&M men's swimming record now is the mile -- 15:20.01 set in 1997 by Tim Campbell -- which Enriquez has his sights set on.
But it won't be a priority for Enriquez until the NCAA Championships, when the mile is swum in place of the 1,000. His immediate focus is on Friday's dual meet against top-ranked Texas at the A&M Student Rec Center Natatorium.
"For this year [my goal] is just to help the team as much as I can," Enriquez said. "Hopefully I have awesome swims at the Big 12 meet, and that will take me to the NCAAs and that might allow me to break the mile and 500 record and maybe the 400 I.M."
Holmes doesn't see any reason why not. It's what he expected when he signed Enriquez after watching him at the Mexican Nationals.
"I knew when we signed him last year he was going to hold some school records within a year," Holmes said. "I didn't know if it would be one, two, three or four. I just knew he was that good. That's why we recruited him. That's why he's here, to come in and help us get better.
"Omar provides a piece of that puzzle, but even Omar is going to have to get a lot better. That's what he's here to do. He's not afraid of that. He comes to work every day to get better."
Enriquez is likely to swim the 1,000 and 500 freestyles and 400 I.M. against Texas.
He's looking forward to being a part of the rivalry that so far he's only seen from the outside.
"I knew about it because of [former A&M swimmers Alfredo and Alejandro Jacobo of Mexico], but I didn't realize how big it was," Enriquez said. "When I get here, I see them saw 'em off and then I went to the soccer game. I know it will get people here, hopefully. The people will care a lot more in this meet than if we were just swimming the No. 1 team."
Enriquez is likely to swim against All-American Jackson Wilcox, who is the lone swimmer to beat the Aggie freshman in a distance race this season.
"I'm just trying to do my best this Friday, and if he's going to beat me, he's going to have to work very hard to do that," Enriquez said. "If he comes thinking 'I'm going to win,' then he'll have a surprise."
A&M Swimming
What: Lone Star Showdown
Who: No. 1 Texas vs. No. 19 Texas A&M
When: 6 p.m., Friday
Where: A&M Rec Natatorium
Admission: free
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