Should I apply to only California schools this year, apply broadly this year, or wait to accumulate some research and apply more broadly next year?

TLDR: Should I apply to only California schools this year, apply broadly this year, or wait to accumulate some research and apply more broadly next year?

cGPA: 3.55 (senior year and post-bacc after stopping D1 sports = 4.0)
sGPA: 3.48
MCAT: 517 (129/127/130/131)
California resident, ORM
ECs at time of application:
10,000++ hours swimming, national level, through junior year of college ~500 hours mixed shadowing and volunteering (private practice cardiologist let me shadow him during patient encounters and surgeries while I staged the rooms for patient visits, brought the patients in from the lobby, took his notes during the visits, occasionally did charting, small tasks around the office, etc.)
~500 hours ED scribing, underserved area/hospital
~150 hours volunteer high school swim coaching
~160 hours hospital volunteering
100+ hours tutoring pre-med student athletes
100+ hour volunteering at local elementary schools, teaching science, etc
~50 hours of MCAT tutoring for pre-med student athletes
~20 hours of charity events for at-need children
0 hours of research other than 4-5 hands on lab courses

Storytime (if you are interested):
Hey everybody! Been lurking this place a few years now and never posted, but I'm looking to get a little application advice so I'm posting from a friend's old account. Sorry if this runs long but hopefully a high schooler thinking of doing sports and pre-med will stumble across it some day and learn how to avoid some of my mistakes.

So I was a D1 swimmer in college. I wasn’t a national champion or anything, but I was pretty good and it is definitely a “most meaningful” experience for me, it taught me massive amounts about discipline, fostered in me a love for the human body, and I enjoyed the endless pursuit of technical mastery that seems to be the primary common thread between medicine and swimming. Unfortunately from a pre-med standpoint sports were pretty detrimental. Getting in the pool by 5:00 am 6 days/week, multiple practices a day, 20-30 hours/week of training, traveling almost weekly during fall and winter quarter, were all not good for acquiring a lot of the traditional experiences most pre-meds get. By the end of junior year, thanks to the one summer I wasn’t enrolled in classes, I had managed to acquire some shadowing, some volunteering at the private practice where I did my shadowing, participation in a couple charity events hosted by my team, a decent amount of tutoring pre-med athletes, a middling 3.3x GPA, and pretty much zero confidence that I could become a physician some day.

I started to realize that if I wanted a genuine shot at becoming a physician, I was not capable of managing it while being as committed to sports as I was. Some people can, at that time I could not. I quit swimming to commit to medicine and enrolled in a summer lab course that legitimately changed my life. It was like, hilariously well-timed. The TAs and professors there introduced me to things like spaced repetition and active recall, and the professor’s approach to, and passion for, science ignited a drive in me to pursue medicine that I honestly had never felt. I set myself a brutal schedule for the next three quarters so that I could graduate on time, started looking for a research position and volunteering opportunities to do while I completed a post-bacc, and then the pandemic hit. I 4.0’d my senior (half-online) year, moved back in with my parents, enrolled in a post-bacc through the extension at a nearby university that I also 4.0’d, but as far as getting my science ECs up I got pretty much nowhere. I lifeguarded (riveting stuff) and volunteer-coached an 80-kid high school swim team to a league championship (woohoo!). I now had a 3.55 cGPA, 3.48sGPA, and a strong upward trend with a painfully clear line in the sand between the student I used to be and the student I had become. Turns out having an extra 30 hours a week and a regular sleep schedule is pretty good for your grades.

Post-post-bacc, I spent summer of 2021 on the MCAT (shout out my 9/3/21 at 3:00 pm takers) and got a 517 (129/127/130/131, lmao because CARS is (was?) my strongest subject but I’ll take it). I scored a job as an ED scribe in an underserved area that has been one of the most fun things I have ever done. I genuinely look forward to going to work. Also I have been volunteering at a different hospital in the city, that’s also going well even though it is mostly just changing glove boxes and answering phones due to COVID limiting our allowed patient interaction.

As of right now I have no research. Literally 0, other than the hands-on lab courses where my data contributed to some larger project the professor was running (does that count?). I have been in talks with a few labs at a local university that seem to be going well but nothing is guaranteed and with the HR nightmare currently happening I doubt I will be fully working by the time applications roll around. So my primary question is this: is it worth trying to apply this year? My parents and a few friends insist I should try applying to my state schools (California), just in case I get lucky. I believe that I have little/no shot at “getting lucky” with a California school with how my application currently stands, and I would be better off taking another year to do research and build up my hours before giving the application an all-out effort next year, instead of trying to “get lucky.”