Aika Swanson celebrated her 15th birthday on Tuesday in West Maui.

The rising sophomore at Maui High School has a big summer coming up as she rises rapidly in the USA Swimming circuit, but birthdays and adventures that go with them are a big part of the plan for Swanson.

After finishing second in the 200-yard freestyle and third in the 500 at the K. Mark Takai/HHSAA state championships in February as a Saber, Swanson has made a couple of consolation finals at the USA Swimming Western Sectionals in March while swimming for Hawaii Swim Club, qualified for the USA Swimming Futures Championships with a lifetime best in April, and won the only state crown for Maui at the senior state long-course meet last month.

Her appearance in the Futures meet is rare for a Maui swimmer and at 15, she will be the youngest from here to compete in the meet — she will be competing in the 100-, 200- and 400-meter freestyles when she takes part July 26-29 in Sacramento, Calif., one of five national sites for the meet.

“I’m very excited, I’m excited for the opportunity and the chance to travel to Sacramento for the first time, to compete at this big meet,” Swanson said via phone on Wednesday morning. “I’m really nervous, but I’m excited and anxious.”

The list of USA Swimming Futures qualifiers from Maui include former champion Jasmine O’Brien, along with Kysha Altura, Jordynn Brown and Kaimi Matsumoto –all NCAA Division I swimmers from Maui — and recent Maui High graduate Karissa Ginoza.

On the boys side, Austin DeCambra also qualified for the Futures meet in the past.

“It’s really cool, it’s an honor and I feel grateful that I made it,” Swanson said. “It makes my goals bigger and it makes me want to achieve more, the fact that I’m on that list and that I qualified.”

The Futures meet started in 2015 to open up big-meet opportunities to younger swimmers, but the meet does not run on age-group divisions and has national-level swimmers all over the place.

“If you qualify, you can swim it, so they sometimes have 25-year-olds or even older at the meet, but she qualified for it when she was 14, so that’s pretty special,” Maui High and Hawaii Swim Club coach Reid Yamamoto said. “I don’t think we’ve had many HSC swimmers from the state do it at 14.”

Her 1 minute, 52.23 time in the 200-yard free at a meet on Oahu in April was more than a second better than she swam at high school states. With consideration times in the 100 and 400 frees, her outright qualifying time in the 200 will allow her to swim all three events in Sacramento.

Swanson is highly considering college swimming, but Yamamoto and her parents encourage her to keep up her dance classes a couple days a week while staying out of the pool. She was also a member of Maui High’s MIL championship girls surf team in the spring while still managing to post stellar times in the pool.

All of them are keenly aware of the demands of swimming at the highest levels.

“I most likely want to swim in college, so it really opens up a big opportunity for that as well,” Swanson said of the Futures meet. “I have thought about it, like, swimming in college is a very big commitment and I sometimes have feelings that I don’t really want to swim because it’s a lot, it’s another four years of my life coming into school.

“But it is my biggest chance of getting a scholarship and I feel it’s a very good opportunity and blessing to be able to swim in college — I try to think about that and the positive side.”

O’Brien and Ginoza, an extremely close friend of Swanson’s, both decided to hang up swimming after high school to concentrate on college academics, at Notre Dame and Southern California, respectively.

“Coach Reid is very understanding of that, so he knows when I have those bad days he knows when to, like, not push so I don’t fall out of love with the sport,” Swanson said. “He lets us do other things, he lets us go surfing, do other sports like dance or whatever I do.”

Yamamoto is making sure her love for the sport carries on.

“Her future’s bright, but again, I also take it with a grain of salt that, you know, she’s still so young and anything can happen,” he said, “but I think with her attitude and the way we’re trying to bring her along, I think she should be good for many years to come.”

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com.