Swimming toward his future
Owen Lin has spent much of his life submerged in water. A competitive swimmer since he was 8, the Northwest High graduate will swim at Harvard, where he plans to pursue medicine. It has been his goal to earn a scholarship to compete at the college level since middle school. Early morning and after-school swim practices have sandwiched his school days for most of his youth, and many of his weekends are devoted to swim meets. He has been shattering swim records since he was 10 years old. But Lin’s aspirations are not limited to the pool. He has used his time in the water to help set him up for a future out of the water.
“My goal was to use swimming as a means to get into a good college,” Lin says.
Jumping off to a good start
Lin has been swimming since he could walk, starting with his dad, a former YMCA instructor in Taiwan.
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“He would just hold me and put me in the water and have some fun,” Lin recalls.
The family often went to the pool, and his father even taught the children of family friends how to swim. Until two years ago, they lived in Greenville, N.C., near East Carolina University. Owen and his dad stumbled upon a swim meet before a basketball game one day and observed the team. He began swimming with the team after that meet.
"We just stopped by to take a look and it was their mid-season meet. It’s their biggest meet in November,” he recalls. “I still actually go back to that meet every once in a while. It’s always a full circle thing.”
Swimming went from being a fun activity to something more serious after he broke his first team record when he was 8.
“I don’t think I was really eyeing it for that meet. I was just gonna swim fast,” he recalls. “Then, I think when I got that record, I saw my name on a website, and I thought, ‘That’s pretty cool.’ So I was, like, ‘Okay. Maybe I should keep trying.’”
He won his first state title two years later, and that motivated him to keep training hard. Even at that young age, he could see a greater payoff ahead.
“I knew that other fast kids, when they got older, they got to go to college for swimming, and they got to go to some great schools. I hoped that I could do the same as well,” he says.
Making it look easy
Lin is the type of student who does not say much about his medals or records, even during an hourlong conversation about his swimming. His family moved to Oak Ridge two years ago when his father’s job brought him to Wake Forest University. The Lins chose Oak Ridge because it was between Winston-Salem and the Greensboro Aquatic Center, where Owen trains. He was excited to train there, he says, because it has one of the best pools in the country and the caliber of swimmers includes Junior National and National team members.
Many of the swimmers he swam with at East Carolina had graduated, so he likes the challenge of once again training with faster teammates.
In the two years he has been at Northwest, his impact on the swim team has been historic. He is a conference, regional and state champion. He has set conference records and led Northwest to a fifth-place regional finish—the highest in school history.
This season, he led the school to a second consecutive conference championship and captured two 8A State titles, winning the 200-yard freestyle with an All-American consideration time and the 100 butterfly with an All-American automatic qualifying time. He currently holds five individual school records and is part of all three relay school records.
His Northwest swim coach, Timothy Richard, says that Lin inspired younger swimmers at Northwest by demonstrating what it looks like to train at an elite level.
“Owen stands out because of his unbelievable dedication and unmatched work ethic. He consistently pushes himself to improve and leads by example through the effort and commitment that he brings every day,” Richard says. “His technique and speed are truly a sight to see, and he makes difficult races look effortless.”
Lin concluded his final season with receiving the Program Legacy Award.
“His name isn’t just on our record board—it is now part of the lore of our program,” Richard said, when presenting the award. “Years from now swimmers will chase his records. But more importantly, they will chase the standard he set.”
Remaining patient and focused
Lin’s college recruiting process was a practice in patience. He had hoped for a spot with the powerhouse swimming program at Stanford, but such teams fill spots quickly because top recruits commit early their junior year. If he could not swim there, he aimed for a university with a good academic reputation. His next choice was to swim for an Ivy League school like Harvard, Princeton or Yale. Lin visited several schools and swim teams. He even considered taking a gap year to improve his times and wait for a spot on a team to open up.
The NCAA Division I swimming recruitment process is notoriously stressful because of early verbal commitment timelines, limited available scholarships and an immense pressure to constantly swim faster. Less than 3 percent of all high school swimmers go on to swim for a Division I team.
“Recruiting can be brutal,” Lin says.
He remained steady and focused throughout, he says, because of supportive coaches and his parents. Even as he considered taking a gap year, his parents never pressured him, he says.
“Your time will come,” they said. “God has a plan for you.”
The best part of swimming
Swimming was always a way to meet new people and hang out with his friends, Lin says. Socially, his mid-high school transition was easier in the pool than it was at school. He had already met a few of the swimmers on the team, and his former coach at East Carolina respected his new coach at Greensboro Swimming Association.
“With the school, it was really different,” he says.
Notably, Northwest has about 1,000 more students than his previous high school. But he gradually started making friends, and by the end of his first semester, he started to feel more comfortable.
“I really do like the school, and the teachers were great too,” he says.
His teachers always welcomed his questions and helped him understand anything that he struggled with, and his counselors at Northwest helped position him academically for college. With a 4.563 weighted GPA and a perfect 4.000 unweighted GPA, he demonstrated the same excellence academically that he brought to the pool.
While swimming demands much of his time now, Lin knows that his work as a doctor might not allow for much time in the pool. Until then, he hopes to make the most of the opportunities available to him, including the possibility of representing Taiwan—his family’s native country—on the national team. His current performances would be on par with those on the Taiwanese Junior National team.
“As I get older, of course, I hope to improve, so that’s a goal to shoot for,” he says. “I’m not going to say it’s going to happen, and it’s not the biggest focus, but if it happens, it happens.”
He will discuss it with his parents, he says. If he is able to swim for a couple of years after college, he would consider it because he would never get the opportunity again once he starts his career.
The most rewarding aspects of swimming, he says, are the relationships he has built through the years.
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