Wilhelm Xu '20 Recruiting Profile

College swimming, to me, is the greatest opportunity to improve my swimming and maximize my potential in the water. My goal is to see how far I can take my physical talents and succeed in the sport of swimming and see if a future in swimming after college is viable. 

Outside of the water, I wish to pursue a degree, go to graduate school, and then become a medical professional in the field of Genetics. 

All my high school life I've taken rigorous academic classes and achieved good grades while going to morning practice for my high school team, going to club practice, keeping up with violin lessons, taking table tennis classes, being a high ranking representative of my LSC's (Gulf Swimming) athlete committee, being a member of my Rotary Club, all while continuously improving my times. That is why I feel like I would be a great candidate for college team because I know exactly how to manage my time so that I can succeed in and outside the pool.

Since I participated in the Rotary International Youth Exchange Program and lived a year in Madrid, Spain (studying and also training), I've seen all kinds of different practices, coaching methods, dry-land training exercises, technique critiques, and teammates. I feel like this makes me more adaptable to changes a team or swimmer can go through, whether it be a change in training methods or a technique change. This experience has opened my eyes to all the possibilities in the sport of swimming and because of that, I am now extremely interested in all the different ways one can improve in swimming whether it be through some new technique change, new dry-land or water training, or new stretching/warm up techniques.

This experience has also made more adaptable to different teammates, team cultures, and coaches as well. Learning to make new friends with older teammates, getting along with everyone, and talking to a coach, all while speaking a foreign language in a foreign country, has really helped me learn how to join a team and help it succeed. I feel that after that experience, I can join any team, get along with the people in it, and help it succeed at a high level.