Shota Ferreira: Back With a Splash

Swimming: a sport not only well-known to senior Shota Ferreira, who started at only nine years old, but also a sport that holds personal meaning to him. After being out of swimming for the past 3 years due to a shoulder injury, Ferreira made his return back to the Mililani High School Swim team in his junior year and ended his senior year off with winning four OIA titles and ranking at the top 3 for states as well. Ferreira also participated in all events offered in swimming, something not many swimmers have been seen doing.

“The thing that made me not want to give up was a lot of regrets because when I quit at the time, I had no intention of joining back so I just felt like I kinda wasted my time up to that point trying so hard in a sport,” said Ferreira, “So I told myself ‘If I’m gonna quit swimming then I’m gonna quit it at a time where I’m very proud of myself and where I think I’ve accomplished enough to where I can confidently say that I’ve done a sport that I love and I’ve continued it.’”

Although Ferreira had no intention of coming back to swimming, he still gave a shot at joining club swimming and MHS’s swim team after some consideration and the support of his family and friends. Ferreria recalled his family and

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friends telling him, ‘We just want to see you back doing the sport you used to love.’

“My role in Shota’s recovery was just making sure that he doesn’t have overtrained injuries and giving him chances to get a break. Knowing the limitations of an athlete and not pushing him to where he breaks has been a nice delicate balance in the last year and a half of working with him because he really likes to work really hard, but he also needs to make sure that he doesn’t injure himself again to the point where his shoulder is gonna hurt for the rest of his life,” said MHS varsity swim coach Grant Bramer.

As a way to get back up into his swimming career, Ferreira started his training in the water for both the high school swim team, which was from 3:15 p.m. to 5 p.m., and club swimming, which was from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. In the water, Bramer started coaching Ferreira in butterfly, breaststroke, backstroke and freestyle, the four strokes swimmers compete with.

“My goal for OIA’s was I just went in with hopes of getting a certain time that I set for myself. It wasn’t really about placements but it was about achieving certain time standards I set for myself,” said Ferreira.

For training in the water, Bramer made sure to create a balanced approach for Ferreira’s strokes throughout the training. This was done by developing a balance-stroke that allowed Ferreira to stretch out his freestyle and backstrokes, but also at the same time to not overtrain one stroke for another. For dry-land training, Bramer also implemented exercises in the weight training room that would ultimately help build Ferreira's shoulder muscles from the front to the back.

“I was able to offer advice to Shota when he was facing obstacles mainly because there’s been many times where I bring in examples of previous athletes that I’ve coached with similar injuries like a rotator cuff injury or a torn labrum injury… So having that knowledge and experience with other athletes have helped me say ‘hey this is what worked for them so it might work for you too,’” said Bramer.

At the Punahou Invitational meet, Ferreira chose to participate in every single event offered in swimming, which led him to being ranked top 10 in the state. In total, Ferreira ended up doing all 14 events for that meet in one day. Along with that, during the OIA championship, Ferreira participated in two individual events and two relays, all in which he was able to rank first in the OIA.

For more information on MHS’s swimming team, Coach Bramer can be contacted at grant.bramer@k12. hi.us. The team can also be found at Mililani’s athletics Instagram at @ mhstrojans.athletics.