Tiago Ruas Deluca won his fair share of hardware in his first season in the pool for Missouri Military Academy, but the school didn’t have its fair share of state swimmers prior to this year.

The sophomore from Brazil earned medals Saturday in the Class 1 state swimming and diving meet at the City of St. Peters Rec-Plex. Ruas Deluca finished fourth in the 500-yard freestyle and the 100-yard backstroke to be among the top eight to win a state medal, capping a historic weekend for MMA swimming that saw Colonels swim in five events — the first competition MMA ever has seen at state according to the knowledge of head coach Matthias McManus and athletic director Brian Meny.

McManus said he discussed with Meny and then implemented an offseason program that collaborated with the YMCA, who he has coached swimming for since 1998. After keeping swimmers in shape until the summer, McManus said he encouraged his athletes to go join a club team to avoid the monthslong layoffs perennial state-qualifying schools don’t have.

“We got close (last year) with Anthony Melick by three one-hundredths of a second,” McManus said. “That’s faster than you can do your watch. We were bummed out. What could we do to make it happen? I worked out with Anthony Melick in the mornings because he was a baseball player, and what we were trying to do is get him trained so that when he went back home, he joined a USA club. When he joined that club team called COOL over in Kansas City, he was able to train all summer with a club team.

“This year, we weren’t behind the eight ball. We were in front of the eight ball. We’re racing against kids that swim year-round. We can’t take time off and go, ‘Oh, we’re going to take a nine-month vacation.’ You can’t. If you’re an athlete in this sport, you must train all the time — at least three to five times a week.”

Ruas Deluca qualified for the 500 freestyle finals with the third-fastest preliminary time of 4:43.51 on Friday and then swam to a time of 4:45.84 on Saturday, which was behind Kearney freshman Whitaker Steward’s winning time of 4:34.41. In the 100 backstroke, he qualified for the finals with the fifth-fastest time of 52.53 while Melick missed qualification with a 29th-place time of 59.00. Ruas Deluca shaved about a second off his time in the finals at 51.97, which just beat out Pembroke Hill’s Nicholas Frank at 51.98 and was behind Clayton’s Graham Zucker’s winning time of 50.48.

McManus, who just finished his fourth year coaching swimming at MMA, said Ruas Deluca went into the weekend with about a 21st seed in the 500 freestyle and owning a time over five minutes. He dropped about 24 seconds off his time to qualify for finals and almost four seconds off his 18th-best entry time in the 100 backstroke. So the Brazilian made a habit of exceeding expectations despite being nervous from the outset.

“He went in that day (Saturday) really nervous, and I tried to calm him down,” McManus said. “It’s really hard when you’ve got butterflies. You’re stepping up there at the big show and everybody’s counting on you and you don’t want to mess up. I just told him to do your best. He slowed down a little bit and I said, ‘Hey let’s just brush this off. You got fourth here. You’ve done really great. So what if you gained time? You’ve got the 100 back. We’re going to use this as a warm up. You warmed up now?’ He said, ‘Yes coach.’ I said, ‘Now let’s swim.’ We got up there, and he dropped time again (in the 100 back).”

His countryman and junior Paulo Pereira de Abreu Donabella finished 13th in the state after swimming to a time of 1:01.84 — 12th in preliminaries with a time of 1:01.60 to drop 1.88 seconds off his time — in the 100-yard breaststroke consolation finals on Saturday after going in with the 18th-best time in the event. He and Ruas Deluca combined with senior Anthony Melick and sophomore Malachi Imrie to miss the 200-yard medley relay consolation finals by less than a second in 18th place, setting a new school-record time of 1:44.23 in the process. Melick, de Abreu Donabella and Imrie teamed with senior Benjamin Huynh to finish 27th with a time of 1:42.85.

McManus said it is a “million-dollar question” of why Ruas Deluca and Pereira de Abreu Donabella came to MMA but is just grateful to the job done by the school’s recruiters in convincing gifted kids from around the world to attend the small boys boarding school in Mexico.

“The Brazilians — how we got them — we just said the right words,” McManus said. “They swam year-round, and they swam with a club team. These boys have a gift. All I did was teach them how to believe in themselves. They didn’t believe he (Ruas Deluca) could do the 500 in under five minutes. And he did it.”

With their prior swimming experience, McManus said there was a lot of potential already there when the Brazilians arrived at MMA and the ability to swim different strokes, which the coach has stressed to his athletes for years at MMA and the YMCA to score more team points. His son, when he swam at Arizona State for head coach Bob Bowman, was exclusively a breaststroke swimmer but had to learn other strokes.

“Bob Bowman just didn’t want you to do one stroke,” McManus said. “My son, Matt, had to learn how to swim the butterfly 200, the 400 IM and the mile plus his breaststokes. I asked, ‘Why is he doing that to you?’ He said, ‘Dad, if you’re a male in college, you must be proficient in three strokes. The reason is I bring points to the team because nobody wants to do them (these hard events).’ I had kids that couldn’t win at sprinting but could swim a mile, could swim 1,000 yards, could swim a 500, could do a 200 butterfly, could do a 400 IM. Now I teach all my kids (that approach).”

In the backstroke, Melick’s time was a season-best — .44 seconds better than his entry time — and was a fitting end for the captain of the team that owns two school records, including in the 100 backstroke. McManus said Melick learned to follow when he first came to MMA and then learned to lead, displaying a great example for the rest of the Colonels.

“He leads the kids in the right direction,” McManus said. “That’s one of the great things that they teach these kids here — to learn how to follow first and then to be a leader yourself. And how would you change things that the other leader that was leading you was (doing) to make you feel uncomfortable and not good about yourself. Anthony Melick was here (at the MMA Natatorium) at 5 in the morning Mondays and Wednesdays.”

Meny said MMA, at 119 students, was the second-smallest school behind Greenwood, at 91 kids, to send at least a swimmer to state. On championship Saturday, when the finals happened, the Colonels were swimming in two finals and one consolation final to give them the distinction of being the smallest school in the finals. He also said 48 schools had a presence at state in Class 1, and MMA did well enough to finish 21st in the team standings at 34 points — just ahead of St. Francis Borgia’s 32 points.

McManus said MMA broke eight school records this season and is eager to see what the team does in the future. He is thankful to the school for giving him the opportunity to coach these kids, to the YMCA for allowing him to coach year-round, to his wife, Linda, for her support, and to the Mexico Veterans Home for accommodating his coaching schedule.

The support for the sport in Mexico, McManus said, is growing as evidenced by the hardware he has won with his YMCA team and the money that has been raised at home meets. Down the line, he would like to see the sport grow even more and thinks a program in tandem with Mexico High School is more possible than it was five years ago.

“We do have a swimming program with elite swimmers,” McManus said. “Using this facility, we’re reaching out to them to get this done because we have some phenomenal swimmers that are junior athletes — been to nationals already and they’re coming up.”