By SwimSwam on SwimSwam
Via Penn Athletics
ON THE PLAQUE: One of the most decorated swimmers in program history, he became the program’s first NCAA champion when he captured the 1,650-yard freestyle title in 2016. A four-time NCAA qualifier and four-time All-American, he won a program-record nine individual Ivy League championships and became the first swimmer in school history to earn the Harold Ulen Award for most career points accumulated at the Ivy Championships. He also won the Phil Moriarty High Point of the Meet Award three times, an accomplishment unmatched in program history. One of only two swimmers in Ivy League history to win four career titles in the 1,650 freestyle, he graduated holding Penn and Ivy Championship records in the 500, 1,000, and 1,650 freestyle events. Following graduation, competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials, finishing 12th in the 1,500 meter freestyle in 2016.
By Terry Toohey
No athlete has enjoyed more individual success in the 120-plus year history of the men’s swimming and diving program at Penn than Chris Swanson W’16.
He’s the only NCAA champion in program history and has won more Ivy League titles (nine) than any other swimmer Penn has produced, winning the 1,650-yard freestyle four times, the 500 free three times and the 1,000 free twice. He still holds the program records in all three events. Swanson also was a three-time honorable mention All-American and a three-time recipient of the Phil Moriarty High Point Scorer of the Meet Award at the Ivy League Championships.
That impressive resume landed the 2016 Wharton School graduate a spot in the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame Class XIV.
Yet if you ask him what his fondest memories of Penn are he’ll say it’s the people he met and the friendships he made in his four years in West Philadelphia.
“I met my wife (Laine C’17) at Penn,” said Swanson, who was married earlier this year. “My best man (Bobby Francis W’16) was a teammate of mine.
“There’s a group of six or seven of us that go on a trip together every year to make sure that we’re staying in contact. I’ve been to five or six weddings for people on the team and more to come. I’ve met the children of teammates.
“The biggest thing for me is the quality of the people I met at Penn, the people I knew then and the ones that I have stayed in touch with since I left. It’s nice that when we do see each other we pick up right where we left off.
“If I can express one thing to anyone considering swimming at Penn, it’d be that the training and competition matter, but that’s not the real takeaway,” Swanson said. “It’s the people you meet and grind through it with every day. Once you leave college, those bonds are rare. The friendships you form on a team — through all those training hours together — those last a lifetime.”
Swanson came to Penn from Jesuit High School in Tampa, where he was a two-time winner of the Henry Hicks Memorial Award as the outstanding male swimmer in Hillsborough County. The Tigers won four straight district titles and three consecutive region championships during Swanson’s time there under legendary coach Bill Shaffer.
He was drawn to Penn by its academic reputation and with the help of future Quaker teammate Eric Vanden Noort W’15, whom Swanson met at a swimming camp at the Bolles School in Jacksonville. Vanden Noort was a year ahead of Swanson and had already committed to Penn. “He was my host when I went on my recruiting visit,” Swanson said of Vanden Noort. “I really liked the team and I really liked the coach, Mike Schnur C’88. I really fell in love with it.
“I wasn’t fast enough out of high school for many top swimming programs. Florida was nearby but out of reach. Harvard and Princeton were the Ivy powers at the time, way ahead of where I was. Mike Schnur saw potential in me when others didn’t, and he took a chance on me.” Schnur, in his 18th season as the Lou and Rene Kozloff Head Swimming Coach at Penn, saw Swanson at the junior nationals and what he saw was a fierce competitor who just needed a little polishing.
“He would go out really, really fast and then fall apart at the end,” Schnur said. “Once I talked to him about how he trained when he was younger, I knew why he fell apart at the end so I knew we could change that, have him train a lot harder and he would be able to finish races. “His talent was very obvious. You saw how he rode in the water. I just loved how he attacked his races and wasn’t afraid to fall apart at the end. We knew we could fix that. The hard part is fixing someone to have the courage to swim that way. Once we taught Chris how to pace races, he became really great.”
Swanson’s ability to pace himself proved vital the night he won the national championship in the 1,650-yard freestyle as a senior when he pulled off an incredible comeback to etch his name in Penn history. Every one of his 50-yard splits were between 26.31 and 26.73 seconds until the final 100 yards when he went 26.07 and 24.38 to erase a 4.16-second deficit down the stretch and touch the wall just ahead of South Carolina’s Ahmed Mahmoud.
“It was a bit of a weird race,” Swanson said. “You section it off into components, the first 500, the second 500, the third 600 and then the last 50.
“The first 500 was dominated by a guy named Clark Smith, from Texas, who ended up being a gold medal winning Olympian. He took it out blazing fast then fell off at the 500 mark. Then you had a Michigan guy named P.J. Ransford, who took it over from there and led for the next 500. Eventually, he fell off from there. And then there was Mahmoud from South Carolina. He took charge for the next 600 before he started to fade away.
“Throughout all of that I was just trying to maintain pace, see who was around me, swim my own race. Don’t do anything out of the ordinary. At the 150 mark I decided to take it to another gear and see what could happen. With about 50 to go I thought I saw Mahmoud close to me but I really didn’t know. I just put my head down and sprinted as fast as I could and touched him out by a tenth. I was surprised. I didn’t think I would catch up to him but it was a combination of (two things). I had the stamina at the end and fortunately he probably made his move slightly too early. That worked out to my benefit.”
Swanson won by .12 seconds. He crossed the finish line in 14:31.56, a personal best and shattered the school record in the event by nearly nine seconds. The previous mark was 14:40.18. He was the first Ivy League swimmer to win a national championship since 1990. Mahmoud was second in 14:31.66.
“It was a pretty special last 30 seconds,” Schnur said. “At no point did I think he was going to win until the last two laps.”
For all of his individual success, though, Swanson was most proud of what the team accomplished during his career. Princeton and Harvard were the top two teams in the Ivy League when Swanson was at Penn and still are. Swanson and his teammates set a modest goal of finishing in the top three in the league, something Penn had not done at the conference championship meet since 1972. The Quakers placed third twice, when Swanson was a sophomore and as a senior.
“He’s one of the guys that I’ve coached in my life that he never cared about himself personally,” Schnur said. “He cared about how he could help the other guys. Chris was never a me, me guy. He was always a we, we guy. It was the points he scored for the team, not the individual accomplishments that he cared about. How can I contribute to Penn’s success? That was his philosophy and evident in every practice.”
And now, in his first year of eligibility, Swanson is the sixth member of the swimming program to be inducted into the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame.
“It’s recognition of all the hard work that I put in when I started swimming competitively at eight or nine years old and all through college,” Swanson said. “It’s also recognition for the support my parents (Craig and Mary Star) gave me, whether it was driving me to practice at 5:30 in the morning or sacrificing their weekends to take me to meets all throughout the state of Florida and all the friends who spent time training with me when they didn’t have to be there. It’s a culmination of all that so it’s an honor to be going in.”
Read the full story on SwimSwam: NCAA Champion Chris Swanson Is Getting Inducted Into Penn Athletics Hall of Fame
Hence then, the article about ncaa champion chris swanson is getting inducted into penn athletics hall of fame was published today ( ) and is available on swimswam ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( NCAA Champion Chris Swanson Is Getting Inducted Into Penn Athletics Hall of Fame )
Also on site :
- Florida man Saul Vargas justifies smashing NYC taxi during Knicks celebration because ‘it was my birthday’
- Wolff: Mercedes started 2027 F1 project ‘before the summer’
- Angharad Evans on Leaving NCAA, Prevailing Through Pressure, and Ascending to One of the World’s Top Breaststrokers