By Gold Medal Mel Stewart on SwimSwam
Trials is a novel for swimmers, written by swimmer and author Ben Brostoff.
The book focuses on three swimmers trying to make the Olympic games over two decades. Hunter Banks, Connor Mahoney and Miles Green are three of five swimmers to break the world record in 2004 for the 400 meter IM. But American swimming is a cruel lover; only the top two move on, and the boys must pick up the pieces and decide whether to pursue their dreams in the years to come. Through doping scandals, suit tech advances, faster and faster world records, death, marriage, geopolitical turmoil and recession, Trials explores what it means to pursue a dream when the odds are stacked against you.
Swimmers and parents of swimmers will love reading or listening to this book while driving to practices or waiting at meets. Need a holiday gift for a swimming family? Trials is available on Amazon Kindle, in paperback and hardcover and as an audiobook on Audible.
TRAILS BOOK EXCERPT:
CONNOR AND THE GET OUT SWIM
The alarm never went off without him being awake. Today was no different. In fact, he had been awake for an hour before he heard the beep of the clock and saw the bright green digital display. 4:57AM.
What was different about today was the anticipation. He had looked forward to this day for a long time. Today was the final practice of his junior year season.
More than a decade of waking up early for practice and meets had honed an innate sense of time in him. As he strode across the Boston American campus, he knew he would arrive in the locker rooms at 5:10, be changed by 5:15 and doing stretches on the deck by 5:20. He still took pride in being early. Three years after arriving at Boston American, no one had beaten him to practice, even if they had beaten him in the pool. He knew not only the time of day, but his splits from races years ago, sometimes even the pace he was swimming while in the water.
He went through his stretching motions and chatted with McDaniels about the Celtics game from the previous night. He joked with Tim McCarthy, a senior butterflyer. He was the first to jump in the pool and begin the 500 free warmup. It was good to be done. Almost.
***
McDaniels had not seen Connor so chipper in months.
Just like the previous two seasons, Connor’s junior year campaign had been underwhelming. McDaniels had tried nearly everything he could think of to turn the year around. He scratched him from the 400 IM in a big early December meet against Boston University. Then scratched him again against Syracuse after the holidays when he looked sluggish in warm-ups. Finally, he removed Connor from the 400 altogether. The event was too taxing, he reasoned. Too much of a commitment for him to improve all his strokes.
If Connor were to make progress, he had to take it one stroke at a time. McDaniels honed in on the backstroke. He programmed hundreds of thousands of yards purely on Connor’s back. They worked starts, turns, underwater kicks, poured over the fundamentals. It made zero difference.
Instead of four bad events, Connor simply struggled in the 100 and 200 back when the 200 and 400 IM were pulled from his workload. He removed the 200. Connor’s times barely budged in the 100.
He was angry at Connor for being happy. He should be disappointed, not debating craft beers between sets.
“Head back!” he yelled when Connor lazily rolled his head at the flags during a sprint set of 50 yard backstrokes. “You forget your kick at home?”
The critiques continued. Connor made the subtle corrections half-heartedly, doing just enough to show he was listening. He seemed to thoroughly be enjoying himself.
“This is not a comedy show Mahoney! Why are you so smiley today?”
“He’s got a girl now!” chided McCarthy.
McDaniels checked himself. This newfound romance was news to him, but the boys were in college. His singling out of Connor was becoming obvious. He shut his mouth for a few minutes, instead giving McCarthy shit for mailing in his last practice as a competitive swimmer.
But his eyes continued to find their way back to Connor. Something needed to be done.
“Everyone out of the pool except Mahoney. It’s 6:15AM. By my watch, we have 45 minutes before you guys are done. If Connor here can go sub 47 in the 100, you can all go home.”
He saw the first excited and then doubtful-but-interested faces. The time would have been top 5 in NCAAs in the backstroke. It was a half second faster than Connor had swum all season and only a half second slower than his best time.
If Connor was scared, he didn’t show it. He projected confidence as he swam over to the blocks. McDaniels clapped three times.
“Out of the pool, boys. This is a one time offer.”
They climbed out and distributed themselves behind either end of Connor’s lane and the pool’s edge. McDaniels could feel the energy building. It wasn’t the first time he had made one of these offers.
Over the last three years, nearly every swimmer had been the target of his bargains to end practice for a fast swim. He was as good as his word in both directions. Sam Workman five months ago got a bad draw when he had to break 4:35 in the 500 yard free. He finished with a 4:35.3. McDaniels was merciless in announcing the time and telling the team to get back in the pool.
He second guessed himself as Connor crunched up into his backstroke starting position, hands gripping the bare metal of the thin bar halfway between the block and the water. Would Mahoney or Pierson have gambled this way? Connor had barely touched 46.5 in the NCAA finals last week. Even if the gamble was unwise, he justified, something had to be done. He had to make him care about something. The fate of a whole practice just might do it.
“Take your marks,” said McDaniels. A second later, he pressed the air horn. Connor’s start was promising. The first 25 was nearly under 11 seconds. McCarthy was going nuts and his teammates followed his lead. Someone had found the cow bell used to signal the last lap of the distance events and was ringing it with force.
Connor, Connor, Connor.
The chants started with just two or three of them and then the entire team was screaming his name. McDaniels felt his pulse quickening. First fifty complete in 23.1.
It would be close.
***
Connor had always prided himself on being a second half swimmer. His dad hated that about him when he lost and loved it about him when he won. He wondered how Wes could not be aware of his own hypocrisy.
This was the thought that flashed across his brain in the midst of his hundred yard backstroke to save the team from the last 45 minutes of practice. The first fifty had felt damn good, and he could see by McDaniels’ approving look at the halfway point this was one of his better swims in a long time.
How could the same strategy yield different feedback? In the classroom, he had been pushed to the edge of his academic capacity and the one thing he had learned from his three quarters complete math minor was the same techniques yielded the same results. The most challenging problem could be broken into smaller and easier component parts and solved with simple principles. Rinse and repeat. Lincoln had been adamant about this point.
“Reduce, reduce, reduce,” he told Connor in his nasal, high pitched voice. At first, Connor had wanted to tell him to fuck off. But this point was repeated so often Connor had no choice but to observe and experience its truth. Reducing problems to their simplest possible units worked. And it always worked.
Saving your energy for the second half of a swim worked when you won and did not work when you lost. And winning was based on how fast your opponents swam. The problem, he thought, as he broke into an all-out sprint for his third 25, was your opponents were always getting faster.
2004 Trials had seen fifteen world records fall across men and women’s swimming. And none of those world records currently existed. The sport was a bastion of progress, celebrated for how the arms race of training techniques, breakthroughs in swimsuit physics, better diet and nutrition and the works increased efficiency and reduced drag. Reduce, reduce, reduce.
Here, he had no opponents. It was just him and that 47 second barrier. He thought of McDaniels’ obsession with Roger Bannister and how he had fought through the psychological wall of the four minute mile.
The individual sports were psychological, according to Matt. At the highest level of swimming, everyone was training the same way, so you could only win through better thinking. Connor thought that was bullshit – what about the Russians and their performance-enhancing drugs? – but now he didn’t have the luxury of skepticism. Anything to break 47 seconds was his friend.
The backstroke flags appeared faster than he expected and he counted three strokes to the turn. His feet hit the wall and he exploded off of it. Fifteen meters underwater. His lungs felt surprisingly fresh.
If he was on pace after the first 50, he knew he had a chance.
***
His trigger finger knew what he wanted to do before his mind.
McDaniels owned the best stopwatch on the market. It was a high end model he had dropped $150 on, waterproof and bright yellow with a massive three row display. The start/stop button had to be forcefully pressed for the timer to register. McDaniels knew just how to pressure his right index finger to exert the minimum force to stop the clock. He knew how to shield the clock with his hip so no one could see what his hand was doing. It would not look like he was hiding anything. Coaches owed it to their swimmers to watch them and not their watch.
Connor’s third turn McDaniels timed at 35.01. It was less than twelve seconds of breathing room. A strong finish could make the time, but it wasn’t a given. McDaniels considered the probabilities. Connor even in his slump was an excellent second half swimmer. His stroke looked strong. He had split roughly 11.0, 11.9, 12.1. The first 25 of course had been aided by his backstroke start, so his pace had been fairly even. His odds he put at about 50-50. Those weren’t good enough. He felt his finger ready to hit stop before Connor touched the wall.
Connor emerged from the water with ten yards to go. He would have a few seconds at most to make a decision. Around the backstroke flags he consciously became aware he was going to stop the clock a half second early. 500 milliseconds – in few walks of life did so little time matter so much. For a swimmer’s confidence in a sprint event, it was everything.
As McDaniels committed what he knew to be a cardinal sin, he vowed not to have regrets. The ends justified the means. Connor and the team would never know the 46.51 he proudly announced was a 47.01. They would never know the whoops and cheers and suck-on-that-Matties were not justified. But it didn’t matter.
None of that mattered to McDaniels. For the first time in three years, he saw Connor unleash a truly primal scream after he announced the time, waiting just the perfect three beats of silence to build the suspense. Someone had turned on the speakers and the first bars of Dirty Water were drowning out the sound of everyone chanting Connor. You could not engineer moments like this, but that is exactly what he had done.
A half second lie. Sometimes it was worth it.
See the podcast with author Ben Brostoff:
#1 ON KINDLE & AMAZON IN THE SWIMMING CATEGORY
Trials spent four weeks as the number one Kindle and Book in the Swimming Category on Amazon and has been a top 20 novel in both categories since its release. As of October 2025, it had sold over 1,250 copies and garnered critical praise from a range of readers.
Trials is the perfect holiday gift for the upcoming holiday season. Give your swimmer or parent of a swimmer the gift of a great book.
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Read the full story on SwimSwam: Book Excerpt: Trials, A Novel For Swimmers, Written By Swimmer and Author Ben Brostoff
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