The puzzled looks come just as quickly.

"Iwo Jima," he says matter-of-factly, eliciting laughs from the confused onlookers.

Luckily for the Clearfield swimming team, this Bison senior is as quick in the water as he is with the wit.

"He's funny," Clearfield head coach Jackie Morrison said. "He's hysterical.

"Behind the block you won't see that. He knows when to shut it off and when to turn on the focus."

Krchnak could best be described as a natural. Swimming since he was seven or eight years old, the breaststroke - his signature event - has come as naturally as his humor and charm outside of the pool.

"I've been swimming for a long time, and as soon as I started it's always been my best," Krchnak said. "It's the one that felt best when I started swimming, and I just stuck with it."

The support of his coaches, including age-group coach Brian Lytle, continued to push Krchnak to pursue a stroke in which he would eventually become one of the state's best.

"He has a lot of the pieces of the puzzle - work ethic, genetics, competitiveness, great attitude," Morrison said. "You start putting that together and you have a great swimmer.

"He was born to do breaststroke. He has the right body for it and the right leg flexibility for it. He had a good background in it as a YMCA age-group swimmer and was always a good natural breaststroker."

Now, about 10 years after he first found swimming, Krchnak is set to take a run at the Pennsylvania state title in the 100 breast when he heads to the 2009 PIAA Swimming Championships on Wednesday and Thursday at Bucknell University.

"He's extremely excited about his chance to have a great meet and have a big time drop," Morrison said.

This season has seen Krchnak re-write the record books, setting and re-setting the team, pool and district records in the 100 breast nearly every week. His 59.40 at regionals just a week and a half ago was his career best (and a district record), possibly indicating that he has yet to peak.

Krchnak won't deny that he sometimes thinks about how much faster he can go.

"Yeah, all the time," he said. "I don't know. I'd like to go somewhere in the 57s. I think that's realistic for me. I'm trying to get down there.

"I'm not going to be disappointed because I know I'm trying my best and that's all I can do, but I wouldn't be disappointed if I went 57."

That seems like a pretty lofty goal for a kid who occasionally "forgets" his own name. Ask around for Mark Krchnak and it might take awhile to get pointed in the right direction. Tell people you're looking for Hoss, and it won't take long to find your man.

"When I was a baby - my dad and I have the same name - my mom said I reminded her of Hoss off Bonanza because I was kind of fat and I was bald and always happy," Krchnak said.

"We were just talking about that in the locker room. They were saying how funny it sounded to say my real name. When I introduce myself I feel awkward trying to say my name is Mark. When I hear someone say it, ‘Oh yeah, that's me.' ... Anytime I would introduce myself when I was younger I would just say, ‘Hoss. My name's Hoss.' "

No longer fat and bald like his namesake, Hoss still maintains his happy nature. But despite his positive attitude, it was only a year ago that he had doubts about his swimming ability.

Even after a successful season and a berth in the 2008 state meet, Krchnak thought he was at his peak. He didn't believe he could even break the one-minute mark in the 100 breast. Then he swam a 59.91 in the consolation heat at Bucknell and everything changed.

"It helped a lot," Krchnak said. "It showed me how far I've come and that I'm still not even where I can be.

"I'm better than I thought I could be then, and now I don't even know. ... Just doing that last year made me see that you never know what can happen, and if you train hard enough you can get there."

Now 59.91 is standard for the Clearfield swimmer, even lackluster.

"I think it was the state meet (in 2008) that did it," Morrison said. "He learned last year, ‘I'm capable of doing big things.' He swam in the summer, lifted big and got much stronger than he was last year. He got much more into it and really committed to that goal. ... (He's) unsatisfied, wants more and is hungry.

"He is just so competitive and he's not afraid to fail. And having said that, if you're not afraid to fail, you're going to win a lot."

In fact, Krchnak has lost only once in the event this campaign - an early-season runner-up finish in the very same pool he'll be entering on Thursday.

One thing is for sure - this is not the same Hoss from a year ago.

"He definitely increased his effort in practice," Morrison said. "He is just an absolute workhorse in the pool. There were times that I really thought I was going to have to go in and get him, he would just extend himself that much in the water."

The payoff from the extra work is obvious just by watching Krchnak in the water and around the pool deck. His leaner body and greater muscle mass are just a prelude to the faster times he swims once he leaves the platform.

"In the offseason I focused a lot more on swimming than I had in the past," Krchnak said. "More weight training, I got a lot bigger, gained a lot of weight. I'm just bigger and stronger this year.

"We started a weight program P90X. It's a lot of cardio, but it's also muscle confusion. You do a lot of different things. ... It's a lot more demanding, and it's just a lot more than I had been doing in the past. I started lifting a lot more free weights, too."

A leaner Hoss doesn't translate to a meaner Hoss, though. He's as renowned for his ability to get a laugh as he is for his swimming talent.

"Swimming practices are tough," Morrison said. "When things get tough and emotions start to run high and people start to get fired up ... He always has something quick-witted to say.

"He knows how to diffuse situations among teammates, and he usually gets them laughing. Maybe at my expense sometimes, but that's ok. It can be a very tense moment, and he'll just throw in a one-liner and everybody just starts cracking up. He also knows the appropriate time to do that and when not to."

As one of the team's senior leaders, Krchnak seems to embrace that role.

"I'm not the most serious guy out there," he said. "But I know there's a time and a place.

"Swim practices can get long and grueling, but when there's a laugh or two it's always a lot easier. It keeps people going instead of the same monotony all the time."

If there's one thing he takes seriously, it's swimming - a sport that is sometimes considered "less athletic" than the more popular sports. Although he shrugs off that opinion as no big deal, he's also quick to dish out a response.

"We're the same as every other athlete," Krchnak said. "We train, we work hard, we compete, we want to win, we do our best to win. Around here it seems we win the most."

And while there has been plenty of recent success for the Bisons in many sports, Krchnak's point still stands - he and his swimming brethren are not second-class citizens in the athletic world.

"We're just athletes. We do the same things everybody else does, just maybe without as much recognition, but that doesn't matter.

"We're not swimming for the glory, we're doing it because we want to make ourselves better, we want to compete and we want to win."

Krchnak will have one last chance to do just that when he swims at states, the final meet of his high school career, before continuing on to swim at the collegiate level, where he has yet to choose a school.

But for now Hoss will focus on the moment at hand and doing what he does best.

"I started swimming to get rid of the energy because I'd be bouncing off the walls if I didn't," Krchnak said.

"Before I have a race I just try to put everything I have into the race, lose it all in the race and hopefully when I'm done just drag myself out with nothing left. Then do it again."

Naturally.