Upper St. Clair's Josh Matheny to swim in 100 breaststroke finals at U.S. Olympic Trials

Upper St. Clair’s Josh Matheny kicked off his first U.S. Olympic Swim Trials competition Sunday night with a pair of top-eight swims in the preliminaries and semifinals of the Wave II men’s 100-meter breaststroke.

Those finishes propelled him to Monday evening’s finals and a chance to earn a spot on Team USA for the Tokyo Olympic Games set to begin late next month.

Matheny, an Indiana University commit, started with a sixth-place prelim finish out of a field of 49 with a time of 1 minute, 0.06 seconds. The time was a personal best and put him second all-time in the 17-18 age group.

He came in with a seed time of 1:00.17.

The Pittsburgh Elite Aquatic Club member came back Sunday evening and again placed sixth (1:00.25), this time in a semifinal field of 16.

Matheny will be one of eight in the finals to be swum live on NBC starting at 8 p.m. The top two finishers qualify for Tokyo.

After a day off, Matheny returns to the water Wednesday morning in the preliminary heats of the men’s 200 breaststroke.

The breaststroke national high school record holder is seeded seventh with a seed time of 2:09.40.

Matheny is one of just three under-20 swimmers seeded in the top 20.

Past Olympic gold medalist Leah Smith, the decorated graduate of both Oakland Catholic and Virginia, qualified for the trials in five events, highlighted by No. 2 seeds in both the 400 free and 800 free.

She kicked off her competition slate Sunday with a pair of swims in the 400 individual medley.

In the prelims, she clocked a time of 4:40.74 and placed sixth. She moved up to fourth in the finals, lowering her time to 4:34.55, just 0.59 of a second away from second place.

Smith’s 400-free prelim heat is Monday morning, and the top eight will advance to Monday evening’s final.

Smith takes to the pool for her 800 free prelim heat Friday morning with the hopes of returning for Saturday evening’s final and another Team USA berth.

She won bronze in the 400 free and gold as a member of the 800 free relay at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Also Sunday, Highlands graduate and Kentucky senior Bailey Bonnett, who is swimming four events this week, kicked everything off with a 20th overall finish in the women’s 400 IM (4:47.78).

North Allegheny grad Rick Mihm, who swam his freshman year at Stanford this past winter, earned 22nd overall (4:25.31) in the men’s 400 IM on Sunday.

In addition to Matheny’s and Smith’s Monday swims, Bonnett and Aspinwall’s Zoe Skirboll will be in the pool in the 100 breaststroke.

Skirboll, a former WPIAL and PIAA champion as a freshman at Fox Chapel, advanced to Wave II in the 100 breast after a second-place finish (1:09.32) in the event during the Wave I trials June 5.

Skirboll is seeded 32nd in the 100 breast prelims, while Bonnett is 46th.