Backstroker takes home NCAA title

Our Athlete of the Week would like to share a story. It's nonfiction, recent and the protagonist is a guy you might see every day on campus. His name is John Thomas, and this is his story about his experiences at the NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving Championships.

About the author: John Michael Thomas currently holds all top 10 records in Hopkins history for the men's 100-back and eight out of the top 10 records for the 200-back. Over the weekend he swam away with first place titles for both events - the first swimmer to do so since 2001. He also broke two NCAA records during the meet. He lives with his friends and two cats in the Charles Village area.

John would like to begin his story on Tuesday, March 17. While the rest of the student body was at the Beach, in the city, or at home being spoon-fed by their mothers, John and his teammates headed off to glorious Minneapolis, Minn.

The team stayed in a Ramada Inn where a large group of lawyers were also staying. While the Blue Jays spent their nights meditating and resting for the days ahead, the lawyers spent their nights drinking and getting evicted from the hotel.

John is known to take an occasional tangent in his stories and would like to return to the meet.

Tuesday was a day for rituals. The evening started off with a banquet for the all the swimmers and was followed by a little Hopkins tradition John referred to as "shave day." Shave day includes shaving ... everything. "Chris Whelan and I just filled up the tub, put on some 2Pac, and shaved." The author would like to note that he has intentionally spelled 2Pac with a "2" and not a "Tu." His reasons why are left unexplained.

Wednesday John took a swim with senior John Kegelman, junior Spiros Moisiades, and junior Chris Whelan. The relay team took seventh place and 24 points for the Jays. Thursday John swam in the 200 Free Relay with senior Bob Sershon, junior Teddy Bulakol, and shaving buddy Whelan. They managed to win 12th place.

"I didn't swim as well as I had hoped," he said about the relays. John didn't feel as well as he'd hoped he would about the relays of Wednesday and Thursday, and spent Thursday night reflecting on the meet and "reassessing some goals."

John reminded himself that worrying about the race wouldn't help. "I told myself that whatever would happen, would happen," he noted. "If I let worrying shut me down, that would be terrible." As for his goal times, which he admits were "pretty lofty," he told himself he'd be "fine if I didn't reach them."

At this point the author would like to tell us about a team of all Russians from the College of Staten Island. This university is known to "heavily recruit Russians" and has a Russian coach. "You never see them speak English," John said. Let us introduce a new character, swimmer Pavel Buyanov from Novasibirsk, Russia! Pavel is a 26-year-old sophomore who resembles a lumberjack. John described him as "grizzled and gnarled." Pavel will enter our story again later.

After a night of deep thought and a small run-in with the drunken lawyers, John woke up Friday with no expectations. "But then I broke a record in the morning," he said. "That surprised me a lot. I thought that maybe my goals weren't as far-fetched as I thought they might have been."

For more detail on the specifics of the races, I direct you to the article written by Mike Yuan covering the meet. For more about John Thomas's story about the meet, keep reading.

"I could be wrong, but I would say there were no assholes at that meet. Everyone was genuine," he said. John made a number of new friends and also met up with old acquaintances at the finals. He said that everyone was encouraging and honest with each other, and helped reduce the stress with jokes, music and stories. One of these was junior Paul Ellis from Kalamazoo College. Ellis held the record for the 100 back before John broke it on Friday. The pressure of the NCAAs got to Ellis, though. "We all wanted to tell him to snap out of it," John said. "Honestly, I wouldn't have cared if he beat me. We all wanted each other to do the best we could."

John did do his best, and took two titles with it. "I felt, I don't know," he said. "I was just so happy. Everyone was cheering and I felt appreciated."

Ellis did not have his best meet. Though this short story is a sad story, it has a moral. "You have to stay mentally tough the whole time," John said.

Buyanov also did not place as high as expected. "I thought he would be pissed off after he lost," John said, "He has the stereotypical Russian intensity to a T." But, our author tells us, Buyanov was surprisingly "gracious and sportsman-like" about the results.

Small stories like this make the NCAA meet more of an experience than a competition for John. "The swim meet is a microcosm," he says. "It's its own community, its own world." After six days of emotion, pressure, competition and results, John concluded that "the swim meet is everything I love and hate about swimming."

And the moral of our whole story? When asked what he would like to say to the student body, John would firstly like to thank everyone who has ever encouraged him. And secondly, his advice to all is simple. "Relax."