Joshua Brezenski '23 Recruiting Profile

My name is Joshua Brezenski and I am 5'10 and 172 pound swimmer, specializing in long distance swims and the butterfly. I'm truly committed, attached, and dedicated to swimming and all my peers know it.  I'm an athlete who knows swimming from the inside out.  One of my greatest accomplishments that I am most proud of is that I am a seven-time Junior Olympian swimmer and competed in international competitions against some of the top well known swimmers from around the world such as in the Speedo Winter Championships in Florida.  I started as a freshman on my varsity swim team at Royal Oak High School (MI) and I currently swim on the boy's varsity swim squad at Hampshire High School here in Illinois.

Knowing that I am capable  of swimming in college drives me to work harder and to push myself every day. What I bring to the team is leadership, by both setting an example and being an inspiration for others, and to always be coachable. I keep the teams' spirits up and everyone pumped. You can always hear me at meets making the rounds before relays making sure everyone is ready to give it their all and leave it all in the pool.  As for being dedicated and committed to swimming, when I first started I was a sprinter and a flyer. As I progressed, my coaches noticed my unusual endurance and took me aside and started training me in distance events such as the 500, 800, 1000 and the mile. I have even participated in open ocean distance swims for experience which are very difficult in rough conditions.  Today, I am very proud to say that I have made great strides as a long distance swimmer as well as a flyer. If I was hesitant to listen to the wise advice of my coaches, I would not be writing this today and I am very grateful for them.

As for my choices and preferences, I like a small college atmosphere where everyone that is on campus knows almost everyone else and there is a sense of community. My father and stepmother are both former college professors who taught at small schools and I used to go there on 'take your child to work' day.  I prefer and enjoy smaller classes with about 20-25 people rather than hundreds of people in one room.  Going to a small college would benefit me by getting to know the people around me more and would make making friends easier.  It would also benefit me in the classroom by getting to know the professors on a more personal level which would enable me to get help when I would need it.

My goal of where I would like to go to college would be somewhere near Illinois. I would love to go to a college in Illinois or states close by to be closer to my family as I am very close with my family and they would like to support me as I move forward.  As for my major, I would like to combine my computer skills with my love and enjoyment that I have for music in a major such as Music Theory with a minor in Game Design, Computer Graphics, or Computer Science. 

At the end of the day, my athletics and academic goals are about giving it my all and learning as much as possible along the way. I would like to swim beside my teammates,  helping where I can, and making memories with them that will last a lifetime.  My experience I had in the 2017 Junior Olympics was one of the greatest moments of my life. I was on a club relay team that was not even ranked in the top twenty going in and we managed to get a top eight finish in every race, earning cheers and smiles from the crowd who thought we were the greatest underdog story since the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team that shocked the world by beating the Soviet Union when my Dad was still in middle school. That type of moment is a feeling that I can bring to any college swim team if I continue to be committed to my studies, work hard in the pool and be a humble leader by example.