Former Crater state champion and Notre Dame swimmer will compete for Mexico in World Aquatics Championships in Singapore

As the date has drawn closer for Marcus Reyes-Gentry’s departure for Singapore and the 2025 World Aquatics Championships, the Central Point swimming star has something to admit.

“Now that I’m getting pretty close to it, I will say I’m getting a little bit more nervous than I have been feeling the past couple days,” Reyes-Gentry said Wednesday.

That gut feeling has little to do with his upcoming participation in the men’s 50-meter backstroke, 100-meter backstroke and medley relay — swimming has been the Crater High graduate’s passion ever since he was an elementary school competitor with Superior Aquatics, so a race is a race by now.

The difference this time around is the added weight of representation, with a dual citizenship scenario allowing Reyes-Gentry to compete as a member of the delegation for Mexico.

“This is my first time competing internationally, so I’ve never really represented a country,” said Reyes-Gentry, “so I guess that is probably the aspect that I’m most nervous for, just meeting Team Mexico for the first time.”

“Honestly, I don’t know any of them,” he added, “also my Spanish is OK, but I’m not fluent by any means, so that’s something that I also definitely need to work on, since I am representing Mexico. I haven’t had any prior contact with many of the swimmers, but most of them swam collegially (here in the United States), so I’m sure we’ll have that to connect over.”

That connection, however, comes second in the line of importance to the connection Reyes-Gentry is hoping to have when it comes to touching the finish-line wall in Singapore.

A five-time Oregon Class 5A state champion — the first Comet to ever win a swimming state title — Reyes-Gentry hopes to build off a promising run at the U.S. Swimming National Championships during the first week of June when he heads overseas Friday.

While there in Indianapolis, he won the B final of the 50 back in a career-best 24.99 seconds and placed third in the B final of the 100 back with a PR of 54.27 seconds. He also posted a 24.21 mark in the 50-meter butterfly time trials, which was the B cut.

Reyes-Gentry, who turns 21 on Tuesday, hadn’t swam the fly in more than two years so his entry time was outside the qualifying window to compete in the finals with everyone else. Although he initially was told he could compete for Mexico in the butterfly as well at the world championships, Reyes-Gentry learned last week that would not be the case since his mark was only a trials time and not in a qualifying race.

“My whole life, or at least the past eight years, I’ve been a backstroker,” he said, “so this is kind of my bread and butter. I’m fine not swimming the fly (in Singapore). It’s not the worst thing in the world that I have these three (two backstrokes, one relay) to just kind of focus on those events.”

Truth be told, Reyes-Gentry is just happy to be carrying around that focus on swimming after what has been a challenging past year as a member of the Notre Dame men’s swimming team. Last August, the entire team was suspended for a minimum of one year after an independent law firm found that most team members engaged in gambling throughout the season after creating its own sports book to wager on swimming — often placing over/under wages on times — and other athletic competitions. The investigation also highlighted a team culture dismissive of Notre Dame’s standards.

The suspension was lifted in February for the Fighting Irish may resume in the 2025-26 season, when Reyes-Gentry will be a senior but with two years of eligibility remaining.

“It was an unfortunate situation,” said Reyes-Gentry, who began his run at Notre Dame as a freshman in the 2022-23 season and earned the 2024 Men’s Most Improved Swimmer Award after becoming an NCAA qualifier in the 100 back, 200 back and 100 fly. “The rules that were set in place, they’re to protect from people who try to do dishonest gambling, or like throwing your own race so you can win money off of that.”

In the predominant cases at Notre Dame, Reyes-Gentry said the team’s gambling involved placing wagers of, say, $10 on their friend to post a best time in a race.

“It was never really like malicious betting,” he said, “but, I mean, we were breaking the rules, so we got punished for it. We made a mistake. We knew that we weren’t allowed to bet, and were still doing it. I’m just glad to be able to have another opportunity to race again, because after being out of the pool for like nine months, it really made me realize how much I love the sport.”

Reyes-Gentry, like much of the Notre Dame men’s swimming team, spent this past September through February writing appeal letters to the NCAA in efforts to regain their eligibility. After an agonizing wait, the suspension was lifted and swimmers like Reyes-Gentry were able to return to training in the first week of April.

That’s what made his performances in June that much more surprising — and exciting.

“Going into (the U.S. national championships), I had only been swimming about six weeks, so I guess I didn’t have too many expectations for myself,” he said. “I’d been sitting out for the past nine months, so I was definitely surprised that I went best times in all three of my events. I’d say that going off of that, that just kind of makes me extra confident leading into Singapore.”

Reyes-Gentry began seriously considering dual citizenship two years ago as a byproduct of his father, Jose Reyes, hailing from Mexico and his mother, Melissa Gentry, from here in the U.S. One conversation with his swim coaches led to another and the process was completed last summer — right around the time he was competing in the Olympic Trials in the 100 and 200 back.

He finished 19th in the 100 back (54.72) and 38th in the 200 back (2:01.31) in what Reyes-Gentry said was a learning experience for him — one that helped settle his nerves for June’s world qualifier.

“I had a miserable experience at the Olympic Trials last year,” he said. “We were staying in the hotel for about 10 days, and each night, I just wasn’t sleeping at all. My nerves were just way too much to handle. After that meet, I actually ended up taking some time off, just because I needed a little reset, because it was so hard on my mental health. I feel like this time coming around for nationals, I was just so much more relaxed having that experience.”

Helping ease the tension at this year’s nationals was a familiar face in his Superior Aquatics coach, Siouxha Tokman.

A former Olympic swimmer for his native Turkey, Tokman began coaching swimmers in 1969 and began his influence on Southern Oregon swimming at Superior Athletic Club in 1994. Tokman took a hiatus from 2006-12 to help care for family in Istanbul, and ultimately returned to Medford in 2015.

Reyes-Gentry said he was in regular contact with Tokman, providing updates on how he was feeling and his practice times and so forth.

“I was just sitting on the pool deck on Day 2, and he gives me a call, and he says, ‘Look up,’” said Reyes-Gentry, “and then I just see him standing in the stands, just waving his arms. So the fact that he flew all the way across the country to Indianapolis just to watch me compete, that meant the world. And I think having him there also helped me swim a little bit better, too.”

“I’ve been with him since I was about 10, and I can’t say enough for what he’s done for me to get me to the position that I’m in today, both him and (Siouxha’s wife and fellow Superior Aquatics coach Alexandra Tokman).”

Reyes-Gentry will compete in the 100 back on July 28, and then faces a decent gap before competing in the 50 back on Aug. 2 and the medley relay on Aug. 3. His goal is to reach the semifinals in at least his two individual races, which would be the top 16 after preliminaries, and he said he’s definitely been trending in a positive direction with more workouts under his belt since regaining his eligibility.

“Having these extra six weeks of training, I’ve been hitting best times almost every single week,” said Reyes-Gentry. “So I’m really excited to see how things go, because I’m hitting best times at the end of a full week of training — four lifts, eight practices — so once I shave and taper, I’m pretty excited to see what I can do.”

“This will be a good first opportunity for many more to come in the future,” he added. “This is just the start of, I think, a successful international career for me, and I’m very excited for the future, and I’m going to be working very hard every day until (the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028). That’s a big goal. I want to do some fun things there. I think I can place pretty high three years from now.”

Reach sports editor Kris Henry at kris.henry@rv-times.com or 458-488-2035