A bright pink cap changed MJ Mao’s life.

Mao was wearing it at a swim practice at a pool in Shanghai when coach Jialin Sun happened to pick up special signals figuratively emanating from that cap to her brain.

“When I walked into the pool, I noticed him right away,” Sun said. “I like to joke that I don’t know if it was the pink cap or his stroke that caught my eye. There was something about the boy and I said, ‘This boy is meant to be with me. What do I do to make it happen?’ ”

That was two summers ago, when Sun — who runs Sun-shine Aquatics here in Hawaii — was on a trip back to her native China. Now, Mao is a record-breaking high school and age group swimmer. Swimming for coach Matt Tanigawa at Pac-Five, the Maryknoll senior holds two individual high school state records along with three individual and two relay marks in the Interscholastic League of Honolulu.

Mao didn’t know it at the time, but Sun actually set sort of a trap to get him to Hawaii so he could develop a love for the lifestyle that he could have here. She didn’t even bother to meet him at that practice and simply walked away to develop her plot.

“I asked my friend to bring him to summer training camp in Hawaii in the summer of 2015, and I said, ‘I want him falling in love with Hawaii, so he will be the one to ask me to stay.’ He fell in love with Hawaii so much that he said, ‘Coach, may I have your help, can I come here?’ I told him later that I wanted to make sure he fell in love with Hawaii first.”

Mao is working with his Pac-Five teammates, coach Tanigawa and coach Sun to prepare for this weekend’s state meet, the last of his high school career. After that, it will be off to Wisconsin on a swimming scholarship. He was offered by many other schools, including Stanford, Harvard, USC, Ohio State, Michigan and Brown, and he is keenly aware of the major support given to him by Maryknoll and its president, Perry Martin.

According to Sun, who is a former swimmer at the University of Nevada and a coach at the University of Hawaii, Mao’s most unique trait is the importance he places on being happy, and part of that is the ability to never put too much pressure on himself in and out of the pool.

“He thinks that being happy is the key to everything, Sun said. “That if you can’t be happy and love 100 percent of what you do, then you can’t be successful in a lot of stuff. He’s real easy going. He has the motivation, but he doesn’t pressure himself and the people around him because he doesn’t want to take the people’s happiness away.”

While following that trail of happiness, Mao, after qualifying for the 200 breaststroke final at the junior nationals in Houston, chose to scratch the final in favor of attending a Rockets game.

“I qualified in third, but that’s my favorite NBA team,” he said. “So I’m OK to just drop a final that I most likely could be standing on the podium. I think it’s worth it because I’m happy. I like the Rockets because I’m from China and Yao Ming used to play for the Rockets. When I was young, I started to pay attention to them. I love the team. Tracy McGrady was my favorite player, of course Yao Ming as well.”

Mao has played some basketball, but not as much since he came to the U.S.

“I’m interested in playing every single sport,” he said. “I just did bowling at a friend’s birthday party. I actually did pretty well, got the highest score overall. Not great. But it’s fun to try new things.”

The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 for China is a definite possibility, since Mao swam qualifying times for the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 100-meter breaststroke (1 minute, 3.69 seconds) and the 100-meter butterfly (54.79) last summer. Since he is a not an American citizen, he did not swim at the Trials.

Unlike other top high school swimmers from Hawaii in recent years, Mao is on the thin side, but when he went on five official recruiting visits, all the coaches said that it’s better to wait until college to start weight training.

“A lot of people train in the weight room,” Mao said. “I haven’t yet. If you train too hard, once you go to college, you won’t have potential to keep moving up. If you don’t train now, when you get to college, there will be big improvement. Almost every single college coach told me that I’m kind of skinny but that in college I’ll be much faster.”

Mao is true to his “not too much pressure” theme.

“I don’t have specific goals for now,” he said. “My goal is more on the academic side. The swimming side, I just want to see what’s going to happen. I don’t want to set a goal too high. For academics, I hope I can keep on track in college, graduate on time. Maybe a degree can help me find a good offer or good job that will make me happy.”

Mao’s records

Hawaii age group, Boys 15-16

>> 100 breaststroke (SCY): 54.40 seconds

>> 100 breaststroke (LCM): 1 minute, 4.43 seconds

>> 100 butterfly (SCY): 47.13

>> 200 breaststroke (SCY): 1:59.57

Hawaii age group, Boys 17-18

>> 100 breaststroke (SCY): 53.71

>> 100 breaststroke (LCM): 1:03.27

>> 200 breaststroke (SCY): 1:58.37

Hawaii (men):

>> 400 medley relay (LCM): 3:56.78 (with Albert Lee, Albert Zhi and Kenji Mori, representing Sun-shine Aquatics)

ILH (SCY):

>> 100 butterfly: 48.90

>> 100 breaststroke: 54.61

>> 200 individual medley: 1:48.81

>> 200 medley relay: 1:36.41 (with Denison Piosalan, Edmund Shiu and Kaelan Rezentes, representing Pac-Five)

>> 400 freestyle relay: 3:08.87 (with Piosalan, Zhi and Keenan Lee, representing Pac-Five)

HHSAA (SCY):

>> 100 butterfly: 47.13

>> 100 breaststroke: 54.40

LCM — Long-course meters, swum in a 50-meter, Olympic-sized pool. SCY — Short-course yards, swum in a 25-yard pool.