Olympic Dream - Andrew Loy

I am excited and honored to be a part of Drew's coaching team. A life-long swimmer and a Buckeye Big Ten champions dream was shattered during the COVID-19 pandemic.  After the Big Ten Championship the NCAA cancelled the NCAA championship meet and thus the Olympic Trials were cancelled as well prompting, of course, the cancellation of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.  It is our hope that next year Andrew wiil be given his chance to make the Olympic Team next.  He is now training with Olympic Champions Ryan Lochte and Caleb Dressel  and Buckeye Senior Paul DeLakis.  to say disappointment was in the air when the trials and the Olympic Games were cancelled, is an understatement.  Training 5 hours a day in the water and conditioning daily is the regimen followed by most swimmers to be their best.  Andrew is looking for corporate sponsors, but of course hasn't had the chance to prove his goals due to the cancellation of the Trials.  For next 8 months, he has to "make it on his own".  He will be training with Lochte and Dressel but of course he does not have the funds to keep his dream alive.  Please, any little bit will help, donate or sponsor this athlete.  If a donation is made, He will provide you with an update during his training up to and including the Trials of 2021 and of course the Olympic Games of 2021 in Tokyo. I asked him to write a story of his passion for reaching his dreams and here you go:

"I first started my swimming career when I was three years old.  I started swim lessons at a small twenty-yard pool a few blocks from my house. At the time, all three of my older brothers swam for the local club team.  I don’t remember much about my first day of lessons, but my family tells me that as soon as I set foot in the water, I loved it.  While all the other kids my age were scared of getting in the pool, I was giving the lifeguards something to do by jumping in when I wasn’t supposed to.  One year later, I was ready to join the club that my brothers were on".

"My first meet that I ever had was a long course competition in New Lenox Illinois the summer after I turned four.  As a young swimmer I always looked up to the older kids and wanted nothing more than to be as fast as them.  I was always setting goals for myself that even my parents thought were a little out of my reach.  As soon as I would reach that goal, I would set another one, just as ambitious as the last.  After a few years on the Marlins, my brothers and I switched to one of the more competitive teams in town.  Over the next few years, I continued to love going to practice, seeing my friends, and working on my goals.  Once I turned twelve, all my friends and kids my age started growing, and I didn’t.  I started getting beat by all the other kids in town my age, and I didn’t understand why.  This was the first time in my life that I didn’t love competing.  I used to come home from practice and talk to my dad about how all my friends were beating me and I wasn’t getting any better.  Every time I would come home upset, my dad would tell me that nobody was making me swim, and if I wanted to quit I could.  I still loved to sport too much to give up".. 

            "When I got to my freshman year of high school, I started to come out of the tough spot I had been in the few years prior.  I joined a new club team called Redbird Swim Club.  It was the club in town that had all the fastest high school guys in the area.  Over the next two years I improved a lot and got close with a lot of the guys on RedBird. Halfway through my junior year, one of my closest friends and biggest role models took his own life after suffering from depression.  He was a star that was going to do amazing things not just in the sport of swimming, but in life.  He was the one who motivated me, pushed me, and got me really thinking about swimming in college.  Through the rest of my swimming career, every time I raced I did it for him.  Whenever I would be struggling with anything, thinking about the impact he made on everyone around him is what got me through.  After a rough junior year, I was heading into my senior year of high school". 


"I was starting to take visits to schools I was interested in, to get a better understanding of what I wanted from a college.  Soon after I visited Ohio State, I called the head coach at the time and told him that I wanted to be a Buckeye.  Once I got to college my motivation and drive only got stronger.  After seeing what the top guys in the country were doing, all I wanted to do was get faster.  At the time all I was thinking about was college swimming.  It wasn’t until I went to World Championship Trials the summer after my freshman year that I realized I wanted more than just being a successful collegiate athlete.  I realized I wanted to break into international competitions where I could compete for the United States". 

"I continued my college career, with both goals in mind.  I knew that if I wanted to go pro after college, I had a lot of work to do.  Each year after, I would go to the NCAA championships and get a little closer to competing with the guys who were making the international teams.  My junior year was my first time making the final at the NCAA championships in Austin, Texas.  That year I became All American for the first time in the 200, and 400 freestyle relays.  Leading into my senior year, the big picture in my mind was to go to NCAA’s and compete for a national title.  All year my teammates and I worked towards the end goal meet, the NCAA Championships". 

"In December of 2019, my team took a training trip to the island of Oahu, Hawaii.  I was thrilled to be in such a beautiful place with nothing to worry about except training with my teammates and exploring the island.  One day, towards the end of the trip, my friends and I were biking back to the dorms to get ready for our second practice of the day.  When we reached a hill a few blocks away from the dorms, I felt a very strange feeling in my chest.  I stopped biking and put my hand on my chest to feel my heartbeat.  Being an elite athlete for so long, I knew that something was wrong right away.  I felt my heart beating faster than I had every felt it before.  I rushed to the emergency room where they ran some tests on me and determined that I was in Atrial fibrillation.  They determined that they needed to reset my heart, in order to get it back into rhythm before it caused any serious damage".

  "The next month was spent jumping from doctor’s office to doctor’s office trying to figure out why it happened.  Atrial fibrillation is most common in men who are over the age of 65, and rather rare for people who are my age.  Training became very difficult while they were trying to figure out a solution that would allow me to continue swimming, without putting my health at risk.  After about a month of tests, they determined that since I am so young, as long as I keep a close eye on it, I could finish out my swimming career.  At the end of February, our team went to the Big Ten Championships in Bloomington, Indiana.  Big Tens has always been a very important meet for the team, but this year it was a steppingstone for NCAA’s.  At Big Tens I won the 200 freestyle, making me one of the top 25 performers in history.  I also won the 200 IM and was going into NCAA’s seeded 3rd and 5th in those events.  I was more ready for NCAA’s than I have ever been.  I knew that this was the meet I needed to perform at if I wanted to go pro and get sponsorships after I graduated". 

"Two weeks out from NCAA’s we all got notified that all collegiate sports had be cancelled for the year, and that there was going to be no NCAA championships.  Shortly after that, they also announced that the 2020 Olympic Games were going to be postponed.  After taking a few days to decompress and figure out what my plan was, I decided I was going to move to Gainesville and train for the 2021 Olympic Trials with the Florida Pro group.  Making the Olympic team has been a dream of mine ever since I was a kid, and even though the world is in a tough place right now, I don’t want to give up on that dream".

Andrew is passionate about mental health and suicide prevention (in memory of his best friend) and will  be promoting mental illness awareness, suicide prevention and awareness and proudly endorsing The Bauer Fund and  #Grantspeed R.A.K. Movement. Below,
Andrew Loy, Caleb Dressel, Paul DeLakis, Tom Peribonio and Ryan Lochte wearing the #Grantspeed RAK shirts.