2025 Chesterton Athletics Hall of Fame: Jeff McDaniel

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

One-third of a century later, Jeff McDaniel explained why he put his chances of winning the 100 breaststroke at the state meet and doing it in record time at “zero.”
“Growing up in USA Swimming in Indiana you knew the guys. You swam against them since you were in 8 and under,” McDaniel said by phone from Ashland, Ohio. “All the way through high school, you always knew who your competition was, and it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I always get out-touched by one of those guys.’ “
Not always.
McDaniel entered the race in 1992 with a seed time of 59.05, roughly a second-and-a-half slower than the favorite.
“Then when I touched the wall, after I looked up at the scoreboard, I looked up into the crowd, and my whole family looked like they were about to fall out of the stands,” McDaniel said. “They were jumping around like crazy, yelling. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! What just happened.’ Oh, gosh, what a memory that is. It caught everyone off guard.”
McDaniel swam a 55.33, a full 1.11 seconds faster than the state record set two years previous. And just like that, the Chesterton swim program fast gaining steam under coach Kevin Kinel, had its first state champion. The tally, including individual and relays, has grown to 52 (35 boys, 17 girls).
Chesterton’s first state title in an event came in Kinel’s 12th year as head boys and girls swim coach. (John Wooden’s first of 10 NCAA basketball titles at UCLA came in his 16th season; team culture isn’t established overnight).
McDaniel’s win didn’t take everyone off guard. Kinel’s quotes in the Chesterton Tribune given the day before the state meet indicated the coach thought McDaniel was going to get the state title he had been chasing throughout his whole high school career.
McDaniel qualified for the state meet in multiple events all four years of high school and placed fourth in the state in the breaststroke (58.44) as a sophomore and third as a junior (57.45). As a freshman, McDaniel won the consolation final, good for ninth place, in a time that was six seconds slower than what he swam as a senior.
McDaniel said the result instantly told him that “everything that year training-wise, it was dead on. It was a testament to Coach Kinel’s coaching because in swimming you have to hit that taper just perfect, or you could be off a little bit with the resting. That senior season training lined up perfectly. That was at that time in my life the perfect swim.”
So perfect that it was the second-fastest 100-meter breaststroke in the nation that year, turning him into a recruiting target for the nation’s top college swim programs. So perfect that it stood as the state record for 15 years, the Chesterton school record for 24 years until Gary Kostbade broke it.
“It’s so crazy how that works,” McDaniel said of tapering. “A lot of people try to do that as a canned kind of a thing for a group of swimmers and every person is different, the reps they need, compared to the same guy swimming the same event. That year was perfect.”
Talent, training and tapering served McDaniel well.
Heading into the meet, Kinel predicted that McDaniel shaving his head, wearing a cap and oiling for the first time would enable him to bring about a big drop in his time.
The day McDaniel won state was the first day in his life that he shaved his head, and for the next 15 years in the state program, that’s how people holding programs saw him, with a shaved head.
If anything, McDaniel’s performance in the 50 freestyle was more stunning. He came into the week seeded 13th, swam the fastest time (21.08) of anyone in the Friday night preliminary and took second place (21.22) in the final.
The day after the meet, a photo of him with both arms raised dominated the front page of the Chesterton Tribune.
McDaniel said he had no plans to go to college until the recruiters came calling. Now he’s the president and chief operating officer of Minnich Manufacturing, which manufactures dowel pin drills and other machines related to the concrete construction industry and was founded by Jeff’s wife’s great grandfather.
Jeff said he was the first in his family to go college.
“Swimming gave me such a great opportunity, such a blessing, for sure,” said McDaniel, who has a family event to attend that will prevent him from being at the induction dinner.
Texan Todd Bricker, the one high school swimmer who had a faster time than McDaniel in the 100 breast in 1992, also went to Tennessee. McDaniel beat him out for the breaststroke spot on the medley relay, which placed at the NCAA championship meet in his final two seasons, giving him All-American status in 1995 and 1996.
Those medals weren’t the most coveted pieces of jewelry he collected because of his decision to swim for the Vols. His wedding ring is. Jeff met his wife, Jamie, a swimmer for the women’s team, in Knoxville. Empty nesters, they raised three girls and two boys. The boys went on to swim for Ashland High School and then Ohio State, where younger son, Rylan, was a state runner-up and currently swims the breaststroke for the Buckeyes. His older brother, Hudson, was a two-time Ohio state champion in the breaststroke.
Jeff was on deck as an assistant coach during their high school swim careers.
He has been back to Knoxville and partaken in the tradition of graduated Vols swimmers by going up into the rafters to sign a support beam. The message next to his signature: “Fight the good fight. Keep the faith. Finish the race.”
McDaniel did all that for Chesterton, which will immortalize his high school swim career by inducting him into its Athletic Hall of Fame.