BOYS SWIMMG: The legacy continues

Updated: December 26, 2011 10:28PM

Aaron and Ethan Whitaker can’t really escape their legacy, so they’re glad to embrace it.

The Whitaker twins are sophomores at Chesterton, where their older brother Kyle put together the greatest career ever in Indiana boys high school swimming. Kyle, now a sophomore at Michigan, won 14 gold medals — eight individual titles, four relay championships and two team titles — with the Trojans while setting one national and two state-meet records.

It’s a long shadow that some kids might have trouble escaping. But Chesterton coach Kevin Kinel and Steve Whitaker, the twins’ dad, both have emphasized that all that’s expected of them is to blaze their own trails.

And Aaron and Ethan, who are already making names for themselves, appreciate having their older brother to look up to.

“He’s kind of my role model,” said Ethan, who is ranked eighth in the state in the 500-yard freestyle and ninth in the 200 free this season. “Coach always talks about it at practice: ‘If you want to get to this place, this is what you have to do.’ He says be your own self when it comes to swimming; don’t try to be exactly like Kyle, do your own thing.”

Aaron has the state’s fastest time in the 100 butterfly (50.54 seconds) and is ranked fourth in the 100 backstroke and eighth in the 50 free. He has heard the same advice as his brother: “Don’t try to live up to (Kyle’s) expectations, but your own.”

Of course, the fire inside the younger Whitakers sometimes has them thinking about their brother’s feats no matter what anyone says. “When I talk to him, he tells me about the meets he’s been to overseas,” Aaron said of Kyle. “It motivates you to work harder to get to those meets.”

Aaron already has a leg up on Kyle in one event. His best time in the butterfly last year was a second faster than the older brother’s fastest freshman time. And he’s off to another great start in the fly again this year, swimming a season-best to edge out rival Austin Flagler of Northridge by four-hundredths of a second to win the Homestead Invitational title earlier this month.

“I was going into that meet thinking, ‘I’m going to get beat bad, or it’s not going to be what I thought it would be,’” Aaron said. “I had no idea I was going to go 50 (seconds) in the fly.”

Now, Aaron is a marked man in that event. He tied Munster’s Kevin Behrens for second in the state in the butterfly as a freshman. Both Behrens and champ Blake Johnson of Homestead have graduated, leaving Whitaker and Flagler (fourth last season) as the top contenders.

“I guess you could say I’m expected to win,” said Aaron, whose ultimate goal is Kyle’s state record of 47.85 set in 2009.

Ethan also had a big win at Homestead, taking first in the 200 free at 1:46.12. “It showed me the potential I had,” he said.

Though they both have bright futures, the younger Whitakers are anything but carbon copies of each other.

“You’d never even know they were twins,” Kinel said. “Ethan is a little more conscientious. Aaron is a little more fly by the seat of your pants, so to speak.”

“Kind of opposite” is how Ethan describes his and Aaron’s personalities: “He’s more of a laid-back kind of guy. I tend to be more serious about things.”

But Aaron can get a little fired up, too. “If I win, I get excited,” he said. “But I wouldn’t show it off like anything big.”

No, because indications are there could be bigger and better things in store for both of the younger Whitakers to celebrate down the road.

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