It’s not too early to start thinking about the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, especially if you are Campbell McKean.

It’s not a far-fetched goal for the recent Caldera High grad and soon-to-be University of Texas swimmer who is just weeks removed from winning a pair of national titles in the breaststroke.

“I feel like it is within reach,” McKean said, talking about competing in the Olympics. “It is still three years away. But since it is three years away, a lot of change can happen. But I think I can grasp what I can do.”

“You never think that your kid is going to do that,” said Becky McKean, Campbell’s mother. “That is his ultimate goal and I think that he can do that. The only person that can make that happen is him. I believe in him.”

It was only a couple of weeks ago that the dream of competing in the Olympics began to come into focus for McKean. Yes, he had won numerous state titles and broke countless state records while swimming for the Wolfpack the past four years. But what he did at the USA Swimming National Championship meet in Indianapolis in early June solidified that he belongs on the starting blocks alongside the world’s top swimmers.

“I know that I deserve to be there because I have worked hard,” McKean said. “Knowing that I worked hard to be there and knowing that I can compete with everyone.”

In the 50-meter breaststroke, McKean won with a time of 26.90 seconds, beating Michael Andrew — who swam the breaststroke leg of the United States’ gold-medal winning 4×100 medley relay at the 2020 Olympics — who touched in 26.92.

McKean capped his stellar performance in the pool at the Indiana University Natatorium with another national title in the 100 breaststroke with a stellar 58.96 time ahead of Josh Matheny, the 2022 national champion in the same event.

Prior to his 100 breaststroke race, his parents told Campbell that they believed that he would break 59 seconds in the event.

“He said ‘I don’t think so, that’s really fast,’” said Becky McKean, an accomplished breaststroker herself. “And then he did. We kinda manifested that.”

The kid who once did not want to go to early morning Bend Swim Club practices at Juniper Swim & Fitness Center is now swimming in the most competitive pools — the Olympic trials, the Junior Pac Pacific Swimming Championships — across the world.

Now McKean will compete for Team USA at the World Aquatic Championships in Singapore in southeast Asia, which begins on July 11.

“Even last year I thought that Australia (The Junior Pan Pacific) would be the last place that I would go to swim,” McKean said. “The age barrier for junior swim meets was last year for me. I just thought that was going to be the last place I would travel to.”