William Cabana '23 Recruiting Profile

     Growing up in a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan, the water and, more importantly, swimming have always been a substantial part of my life. While pushing myself ahead academically during and after school hours, I have been training and perfecting my swimming abilities. Even coming from a small club/rural swim division has never held me back in putting all of my effort into my swims, and I constantly push and improve my times no matter the size of the competition. That being said, I do achieve high enough times to compete in the highest level of the state, and have qualified for the USA Swimming State Meet (Michigan) for the past four years.

     As my grandfather always said, academics is the key to success no matter who or where you are. Since the seventh grade I have been on an advanced academic path, taking high school level math classes in that year, and now being dual enrolled in North Central Michigan College to take even more rigorous courses. I see to it to always maintain high academic achievements with lots of self-motivation to seek out additional opportunities, such as adding a language course (French) and an intro to neuro-science class on my own with online schooling. I continue to hold a 4.0 GPA, even with additional and advanced classes, which keeps me in high honor roll and on track to graduate a valedictorian. 

     As a student registered in NSCA, I have athletic achievements and aspirations as well. As I swim for a smaller club team in northern Michigan, I have to put in extra time at the pool or in the gym to continue training to become a college athlete. On top of 4 team practices a week during our season from 6:45-8:45 in the evenings, I also swim most Tuesday and Thursday mornings before class on my own. I go and weight train in the school gym after my school day, twice a week. During summers along with practices I will do open water swimming in the Little Traverse Bay. Once a week I will swim 2-3 miles to distance train. In recent years I have also participated in the Harbor Springs Coastal Crawl a one, two, or three mile organized open water swimming competition in our bay and have also done a swim across the bay totaling just under 5 miles and completed in one hour thirty seven minutes. I will continue to train and prepare for a rigorous physical schedule when becoming a college athlete. 

   Academics and Athletics are not the only things in my life that matter to me. My small tight knit community and family are very important parts of my life. I participate in clean ups of surrounding nature preserves, and even done water and wild-life testing through my school and other organizations. I was also accepted for membership in the YAC or the Youth Advisory Committee for the Petoskey-Harbor Springs area community foundation, in which we meet once a month to discuss where to award grant funds in our community. Last but certainly not least, the half of my family on my dad's side are French-Canadian and I have always embraced that part of my heritage. I have been bilingual since childhood and am very fluent in French. Recently I spent the entire second semester of my sophomore year living in Montreal, Canada with my grandparents. There I took the B parts to all my existing classes online, to which I maintained my 4.0 GPA. I also spent that time speaking and living completely in French, pushing myself out of my comfort zone and strengthening my communication, determination, and independent life skills.  This only built on my love of traveling - which was sparked by an amazing opportunity to travel to China in 2019 with my Aunt and Grandmother.

     I am already very excited about the opportunities both academic and athletic I can take at college. Advancing my knowledge in interesting fields and improving my swimming career and abilities.