During the club swimming season, Burlington High senior Cobe Garcia travels more than two hours each day to train with Ad Astra Area Aquatics in Lawrence.

Driving 75 miles each way is a price he’d gladly pay to achieve his dream.

Garcia signed his letter of intent to swim for the University of Kentucky and held his signing ceremony at Haskell Indian Nations University’s swimming pool on Wednesday in front of his club teammates and a number of parents.

His only regret is he wished he joined the club team earlier because of the progress he’s made in the past two years.

“Another big reason why I work really hard is because if I don’t work hard, it’s not really worth it to come up here,” Garcia said. “We have a good facility in Burlington but there’s nobody there. If I don’t work hard, I can just go lollygag there. But if I want to work hard, I come up here and do what’s expected and get better.”

Ad Astra area aquatics team member Cobe Garcia, center, who signed a letter of intent to swim at Kentucky, is flanked by his father, Carlos Garcia, left, and mother, Jena Garcia, all of Burlington, as his coach, Patrick Norman, watches Wednesday, April 29, 2015, at Haskell Iindian Nations University.

Garcia doesn’t swim for Burlington because it doesn’t have a team, so he focuses all of his effort into the club season. During the spring, he pitches and plays right field for his school’s baseball team, which is ranked No. 4 in Class 3A.

He was drawn to Ad Astra after swimming against them for several years. He also was looking for a new team because his old club team didn’t have any older swimmers.

“It’s really exciting because where I’m from, it’s a little 3A school,” Garcia said. “The only people who sign are going to private (Div. III) or community colleges. There’s nobody who signs with big schools. I think the last person was Tyrel Reed with the (Kansas University) basketball team. It just doesn’t happen often.”

Garcia holds the AAAA club records in the long-course 50 freestyle (23.82), 100 freestyle (53.14) and 100 backstroke (1:02.05). He’s about half a second away from qualifying for the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team Trials in the 50 freestyle, which is one of his goals this summer.

When he’s out of school in the summer, his schedule often involves waking up at 4:30 a.m. for a 6 a.m. practice. He will then stay in Lawrence at a friend’s house to coach swim lessons and wait until the 5 p.m. evening practice, which usually lasts two hours, before making the drive back to Burlington.

Of course, there were plenty of times he didn’t want to make the long trip to Lawrence. He credits his parents for keeping him on track and driving him whenever he was too tired to go behind the wheel.

“If I didn’t have them in the times I needed that extra little push to keep going, then I probably wouldn’t be swimming right now,” Garcia said.

Garcia chose Kentucky over the University of Evansville and Missouri University of Science and Technology. He liked how the Wildcats had a “respectfully casual” relationship between swimmers and coaches. The swimmers call their coaches by their first name and Garcia was sold on the school after taking a visit there.

Though he held a signing ceremony beforehand at his high school, he wanted to make sure he could celebrate with his teammates and coaches after how much they’ve helped him in the past few years.

“Before, when I wasn’t on this team, if you took the person with the worst work ethic here and divide that by four, that’s about how much effort I put into swimming,” Garcia said. “I was just going off all talent. But when I got here and I started working hard, that’s when I started to see big improvement and that was really the big key for me in swimming.

“I was told I had a lot of talent, but I didn’t believe it really. I see it now.”