Julius Markowski '24 Recruiting Profile

I started to learn how to swim through swim lessons at a very young age. While being born in the United States and raised my whole family is initially from Poland. Making me a 1st  generation child for this land of opportunities. I as a child had a lot of energy as well as a burning passion to achieve things that I deeply wanted. And this was a good start to my future as this passion would help me get through a lot. I ended swim lessons at age 10 and went on to telling my parents that I wanted to try competitive swimming. This was not forced on me what so ever, and my parent were with it 100 percent and thought that it was great to have me doing any kind of extra circular activity. I quickly joined the team known as the "Schambug Baracudas." and at that time I started where everyone did level 1. Level 1 was a real challenge as it was my first time getting through many practices. But later after my father passed I lost a lot of motivation towards the sport in general. This however did not stop me as I kept forcing myself to push through it and matured faster then most people do. I quickly learned how important it is to have leadership skills as well as to be a good team player and advanced my way all the way up to level 4 within the span of about a year and a half. While being in level 4 I met what will be the Head coach. And his name is Kodey Visitacion. I quickly got better at what I started to do best which was the 50 and 100 freestyle. Even though there were kids that were and still some are faster then me I did not let that discourage me from being a vital aspect to helping our team out. When I acheived highschool swimming I thought that it would be a lot more hard then what it really was. I can not express enough that I love the aspect of teamwork when it comes to highschool season. I was at a standpoint to where it was just a race for me and me only in park disctrict. But here in highschool, there was oppertunity to cheer on your team members and that's what I did.  Highschool is a place where you care about oother peoples times just as much as you value  your own. Recently I just finished my season at SEHS where I attend now and will attend for 1 more year. I modivated myself to work a lot more on the little details. And after looking at my own preformeence I worked on trying to beat my times. I worked on myself so hard in the gym as well as being a fully commited full times athlete to drop a lot of my times. I went from a sophomore season in 2022 of having a 27 second 50 free and a 1 minute 3 second 100 free to setting a new all time high for myself. I now proudly say that I am going a 55:84 in the 100 free and a 25:56 second 50 free. This determination is a key part of me and has helped me out through my whole journey. And I do not plan on stopping here. I have a burning passion to do better and I will. Next year will be the most important year that I will ever swim. As I have to make a decision that can and will affect me for the rest of my swimming career. This choice is picking a college to swim at that I will peruse my dream in to make it to all of the highest places achievable. I do not know where I want to go as I am undecided but what I do know is that I am starting to make my 2024 list and have colleges actively looking at me. Wherever I go it will at the end the day have to be where I feel most at home. Even though all of the colleges and offers so far have really good programs. In the long run I feel like I will be a very important asset to the future team that I will be a part of.