BERKELEY – Matthew Josa is still kicking.

In a very literal sense, the junior from Charlotte, N.C. knows all about the power his legs can have when it comes to influencing the times he hopes to post as he joins his Cal men's swimming and diving teammates at the 2017 NCAA Championships in Indianapolis, Ind.

Taken another way, the simple act of kicking might remind Josa just what he's been through to get to this point.

When he arrived at Cal in the fall of 2016, Josa was a familiar name within swimming circles. Coming off an Olympic Trials performance in which he posted the fastest preliminary time in the 100-meter butterfly and placed sixth in the final, the former Swimmer of the Meet at the NCAA Division II Championships left the nationally prominent SwimMAC program and headed west in search of continued improvement in the pool and personal growth outside it.

That plan took a detour within a week. While biking to a team function, Josa chose a route that took him through Channing Circle. When a car didn't stop at a stop sign and Josa grabbed for his brakes, the result was one of Cal's newest swimmers flipping over the car and landing on his right side.

After a series of phone conversations with Cal head coach David Durden, junior Nick Silverthorn was summoned to collect Josa. When he got there, Silverthorn found his teammate under the care of a few fraternity brothers with a bag of frozen broccoli on his injured wrist and a hot dog in hand. Finally, after making it to see the team doctor and getting x-rays, Josa was diagnosed with a broken wrist.

His Cal career would have to wait.

"That was probably one of the most frustrating periods I've had to deal with at this point," Josa said. "I've had injuries in the past but this was especially frustrating because I had just joined a new team. You want to prove yourself to your new team, you want to show that you're a fast swimmer, you want to be there for sets and race guys and make your team better."

And so, he kicked. Without the use of his right wrist, Josa tried his best to become part of the team culture. He did kick set after kick set, and although his fitness stayed at a serviceable level, racing wasn't an option while he healed.

At the same time, he continued to make the transition to campus life in Berkeley. Josa wasn't going to compete for the Bears during the fall season anyway, but any development within Cal's team structure was put on hold due to his injury.

"Again we come back to that idea of Berkeley and the academic rigor. The units he took (at Queens), not all of them transferred in directly so he had to sit that first semester and watch our guys compete," Durden said. "So, not only is he dealing with injury but all he can do is train with his new team. He can't race or compete with his new team so that's a huge challenge. With any competitor, in a competitive environment like ours, to just kick for about six weeks is tough. That starts to take its toll on you because you can't do the same thing that everyone else is doing and the times that you can do the same thing as everyone else, your legs are so tired because that's all you've been doing that it's hard to keep up."

Josa wouldn't wait long to return to competition. Leaning on his kick and his underwaters, he made his comeback at an event in Italy, winning the 100-meter butterfly at the Trofeo Nico Sapio. Josa continued on to represent Team USA at the World Short Course Championships in Canada, where he added a pair of relay medals to his trophy case.

When he returned to Berkeley after the team's annual training trip to Colorado, Josa was back in the competitive mix. He worked his way through the dual meet season in typical fashion, mixing up his events and making progress towards the postseason.

"It was just getting my racing skills back and getting used to racing again and the environment dual meets and college swimming bring," Josa said. "I feel like I'm finally adjusted to that. It took a few weeks. Practices don't account for racing. That's not racing, that's not racing against other people. I just needed to race."

By the time Pac-12 Championships rolled around, Josa was primed for bigger and better things. Again though, adversity struck. This time, it came in the form of an illness that he'd have to swim through. It forced Durden and associate head coach Yuri Suguiyama to alter their relay plans and left Josa to manage his way through his first conference meet as a Golden Bear.

When it came to the 100 fly though, there would be no holding back. Josa's signature event featured a duel between Golden Bears and the newcomer made it to the wall first, finishing with a time of 45.41 to out-touch teammate Justin Lynch and capture his first Pac-12 title.

"As he got into a race he was a little more comfortable with, just the pattern of how to swim a 100 fly took over. Even though he wasn't feeling great, that took over," Durden said. "We tried to squeeze as much out of him as we could through that meet with the sickness he was having and he did a nice job. I think now that we come off that meet, he's healthy, he's rolling, he's feeling better and we're excited to see what he can do these next two weeks heading into NCAAs."

The next chance to make his mark comes in Indianapolis, but the reality is a season of adversity may only be one piece of an ongoing plan for development. Only a junior with plenty of opportunities on the national and international swimming stage still ahead, Josa's plan doesn't just include what goes on in the pool.

In the meantime, he'll just continue kicking, both in the pool and on dry land, and see where it takes him.

"(Dave) continues to remind me that he's seen a lot of growth in me personally as well as with swimming. He thinks the personal growth is actually applying to the swimming and that's honestly all I can ask for," Josa said. "That's one of the reasons I came here. I wanted to grow as a person. Being from Charlotte and going to school in Charlotte didn't hold me back, but you want to get out of your element at some point to really see what you're made of and I feel like Cal has been that for me. It's been a whole other element and atmosphere and I've had to decide what type of person I want to be and decide what path I want to follow."