Wyatt Marcum '25 Recruiting Profile

I was introduced to swimming relatively late, at the age of 9, when my family and I were at the Canary islands for the winter holidays in 2013. The hotel had a lot of pools but I did not know how to swim. As soon as we came back from vacation I was enrolled in swim lessons. Afterwards I joined a swim club and tried some racing and really enjoyed it, to the point where it was the only thing I really wanted to do. Since then I have been training more and harder while improving my times and technique every season. I have seen continuous progression over the last seven years, and believe that this is only the beginning.

Through swimming I was able to learn a lot about myself and my body, such as how much I am physically capable of giving, and how to push past both mental and physical barriers. Through this process, I am figuring out how much stress I am able to put on my body and how my body functions/responds under that stress. This knowledge has allowed me to continue my growth and progression in both the water and the gym.

For my academic goals I would like to graduate High School with a good GPA (3.0+), and be accepted into a solid university. Ultimately, I hope to earn a college degree while being able to continue swimming competitively at the highest levels. I am an American who has lived abroad for the last 11 years. I speak, read, and write German as my first language, but also speak, read, and write English with native or bilingual skill. Additionally, I am competent in both Spanish and French holding multi-lingual capabilities in each language.

With swimming I have had to overcome several of my own mental barriers. For example, self talk like "I can not do this" and then learning to overcome this sensation, and continue to progress during or even after failure. Early in my career I had trouble balancing my academic life with my athletic life, and it was something that I had to learn to deal with, as in being able to consistently get good grades while also training 5-7 times a week. One of the most important things I have had to overcome, is that not everything is going to be fun or easy and I am going to have work very hard for my goals. Through my experiences, I am learning when that time is, and I am beginning to understand both how to commit, and when to commit to continue progressing. For example, I regularly need something to think about or something to challenge myself with. If a training set is too easy for my liking, I find ways to make it more challenging and beneficial for myself and maybe other teammates that decide to tag along.  If teammates for example, are struggling through a hard set I try to motivate them to continue pushing, and at the same time try to create a positive environment so that  even if the set is hard, people are still having fun.