For Punahou swimmer Jasmine Mau, her victory against elite national competition in the women’s 50-yard freestyle nine months ago will always be special.

It came when she was still a freshman, and at the USA Swimming-backed Speedo Champions Series Western Regional in Federal Way, Wash., a few weeks after her dominant performances led the Punahou girls to Interscholastic League of Honolulu and state championships.

Mau was scheduled to race in the B Final, as her preliminary time didn’t qualify her for the top-tier A Final. But 5 minutes before the finals were to get under way, a competitor scratched from the A Final, and Mau was reseeded to take the other swimmer’s place.

"I was scared. I was shaking. I had negative thoughts in my head," Mau recalled. "But my teammates (from the Kamehameha Swim Club) came behind the block to support me. Seeing those faces made me feel comfortable and gave me strength."

In a race where only 0.47 of a second separated first from last, Mau triumphed with a time of 23.34 seconds. The victory was especially sweet because Mau was swimming in the dreaded Lane 8, an outside lane for "slower" swimmers who must cope with the choppiness of waves bouncing off the pool wall. "So I was an outside lane smoker," Mau said, "smoking" the competition from an undesirable position.

With many of her mainland competitors at Federal Way either high-school upperclassmen or collegians, the 5-foot-4 Mau remarked, "They were so tall. They all seemed a head or a head-and-a-half taller than me."

But as local prep swimmers gear up for this season and with the state high school championships only two months away, Mau, now a 16-year-old sophomore, is expected to tower over the girls’ field.

Mau is the best all-around female swimmer in the state, said Kevin Flanagan, co-head coach of the Kamehameha Swim Club and two-time All-America swimmer at Florida State University. Put Mau in any race at any distance with any stroke, and the odds are 90 percent that she will win, asserted Flanagan, who, with his brother, John Flanagan, has coached club swimmers to a USA national title, the Beijing Olympics, Olympic trials and senior and junior nationals.

"She has talent and an immense work ethic. She has terrific potential, and her ceiling is super-high, as she is capable of accomplishing a lot," Kevin Flanagan said.

Jeff Meister, Mau’s mentor at Punahou, who has been honored numerous times as ILH swim coach of the year, said Mau’s win at Federal Way is emblematic of her. "She will rise to the occasion. She respects (her competition), but she will not back down. That’s how she responds," he said.

Ironically, swimming wasn’t Mau’s first sporting passion. It was basketball, which her father, Laurence Mau, played for Maryknoll. Her younger sister, eighth-grader Jamelyn Mau, is a member of the Punahou intermediate team.

It was hard to give up basketball, but she discovered she loved the water more, Jasmine Mau said. When she was 8, she began swimming for the Kamehameha Swim Club. She easily learned the fundamentals of swimming, and quickly became a champion in age-group competitions. Now, she is part of the club’s top-tier "national" group.

"She’s easy to coach, and good to have around because she leads by example," said Kevin Flanagan, giving an assessment shared by Punahou’s Meister. "Training-wise, when her teammates see what she is doing and how hard she is working, it makes things easy for us."

Explaining why she is so self-motivated, Mau said: "There are so many others out there who are talented. It makes no sense to focus on them (as adversaries). I focus on what I can control: that’s becoming the best I can be. Anytime I have something to do, I am happy to do a little more. And when I have done something, I always look ahead and try to figure out what I could have done better."

Now, her biggest goal is to qualify for the Olympic trials. "In any event," said Mau, who specializes in the 100-yard butterfly, and 50-, 100-yard and 200-yard freestyle.

But Mau is inspired not by Olympic gold medalists, but by Daren Choi, her Kamehameha Swim Club teammate and a Pearl City High School student. Choi, like Mau, became a prep championship swimmer as a freshman, only to suffer a traumatic spinal injury nearly 18 months ago when he fell 15 feet off a rock in Savaii, Samoa. Mau, Choi and several other swim club members were sight-seeing in Savaii after having participated in the Oceanic Swimming Championships in Apia, Samoa.

Initially, there were fears that Choi would never walk again, Mau recalled. However, a few months after the accident, he started walking. Driving Choi is the steel-strong determination he displayed in practice and competition, Mau believes.

It is a trait Mau shares.

"A lot of people seem to think (competitive) swimming is boring. We only swim in a straight line," she said. "But it requires a mental toughness that can help you in other parts of your life."