“I’m just taking it as a good experience to race against some of the people I’ve looked up to during my swimming career,” he said.
“To be in the mix with Olympians and people who have swum for Australia whose careers I’ve followed will be a good experience.”
Matuschka has trained with MSC on weekends since joining as a year 10 student, but largely trains solo in Horsham during the week.
His father Bryan said he was ‘blown away’ by his son’s work ethic and the results it had led to.
“When he first started with Melbourne Swimming Club, I think they were a bit hesitant to take him on because he’s doing most of the training by himself,” Bryan said.
“Jacob said to us, ‘I want to swim in the state [championships]’ so I told him I’d do what I could to support him but that it was going to be hard.
“When he went down there he was 16, and the coach said he didn’t think a 16-year-old would ever have the commitment to be able to pull this off.
“I’ve seen him get out of the pool when he’s training by himself to throw up – that’s how hard he’s pushing himself.”
Matuschka said he did his best to take advantage of the time he was able to spend with MSC coaches, including Ian Pope, who mentored Olympic gold medallist Grant Hackett.
He said the results of his work with the club had shown themselves, as he won a bronze medal at the Victorian short-course swimming championships in January and was part of a gold-medal-winning MSC relay team.
His results also caught the attention of Canisius University in Buffalo, New York in the United States, which offered him a scholarship to compete for the school in the prestigious National Collegiate Athletic Association division one men’s swimming championships.
Matuschka, who is set to commence a degree at the university in September, said his scholarship was the realisation of a long-held goal.
“One of the people dad worked with mentioned swimming in America and asked if I’d looked into that. Then that became my goal and I realised I wasn’t going to get there unless I made some changes to my training,” he said.
“That’s when we started going to Melbourne to seek out some more experienced coaching opportunities.”
Matuschka credited the support of his parents for allowing him to achieve his goals.
“We started [travelling to Melbourne] at the end of year 10. It was tough because we’d go down on a Friday for training on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, so I’d miss Fridays at school,” he said.
“Obviously once I was in year 11 and 12 in school it was pretty important that I was there for those lessons, so I always had to be on top of it and be organised to catch up on the school work that I’d missed.
“Mum and dad were awesome. Mum would take me down most weeks, but they both sacrificed a lot to get me down there to train and give me those opportunities, which has paid off now that I’ve got a scholarship.”
But Bryan said his son’s own work ethic was the driving force behind his success.
“My wife has done a lot of running around with him in the car, but we basically put it on him and said ‘we’ll support you, but you have to do the work’,” he said.
“There are a lot of 5.30am starts, and I said the instant I walk in to take you to training and you want to go back to bed, I’m fine with that because I don’t mind having the sleep either.
“But every morning I’d go in and he’d be halfway across the room already. He’s had unbelievable dedication to it.”
Matuschka said he was unsure of how far he could advance in the sport, but was determined to find out.
“When I get to America my goal is to beat the school records and hopefully win a conference championship while I’m over there,” he said.
“I work a lot better when I’m with a group, so when I go over to America I just want to try my best to see how far I can go with the sport.
“Because I’ve been training by myself in Horsham most of the time and only getting to train with a group when I go to Melbourne, I’m not really sure yet how far I can go.”
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