After a 12-year hiatus, senior Kellan O’Connor is finally back on top of the swimming world.
The 22-year-old enters this week’s Big Ten Championships as the favorite in the 100- and 200-yard butterfly. It’s a role he hasn’t played since he was 10 and one of the top 16 prepubescent swimmers in the country.
But after that early peak, his performance stagnated for eight years. He improved enough in high school to earn a scholarship from Northwestern, but it wasn’t until doctors discovered he was anemic during his freshman year that he was able to overcome the condition and return to the form of his early years.
O’Connor began swimming in a country club league when he was three. At eight, he convinced his parents to let him dedicate his life to swimming. By his 10th birthday, he was one of the fastest young swimmers in the country. Back then, O’Connor thought he might have a future in swimming.
“I started dreaming of glamour,” he said.
But it wasn’t easy. While his peers hit puberty and grew, O’Connor didn’t get much stronger. Between his 11th and 17th birthdays, his times didn’t improve enough to stay competitive. During his freshman year of high school, O’Connor didn’t even make the state championships in Arizona.
“We asked him on a regular basis, ‘Are you sure you want to keep doing this?'” said his father, Chuck O’Connor. “But he just kept at it. He never wavered.”
By his senior year of high school, O’Connor had improved. He won the 200-yard individual medley at the state championships. He still wasn’t a superstar, but his passion for swimming never waned.
“He swam in Arizona in an outdoor pool in December, when it’s cold,” his father said. “He got up at the crack of dawn and then went to school. And then he came back to the pool.”
O’Connor wasn’t the fastest in his freshman class at NU, but he may have been the most eager. His future roommate and co-captain, Dave Hersh, said O’Connor wanted to befriend his teammates even before the season began.
“I was walking around Bobb (Hall), wearing a T-shirt that said swimming on it,” Hersh said. “Kellan ran up to me enthusiastically and asked me if I was a swimmer.”
He may have been excited to join the team, but O’Connor was far from a perfect physical specimen. He arrived at NU in the fall of 1999 as a tall, lanky freshman.
During the middle of his freshman season, NU’s medical staff discovered a problem: O’Connor was anemic. The lack of iron in his blood made it difficult for him to maintain muscle mass.
With iron pills, O’Connor morphed into a stronger swimmer.
“My times dropped so drastically it was scary,” he said.
The iron helped him compete, but he didn’t immediately become a Big Ten champion. That took more hard work. O’Connor credits his training partners and assistant coach Sergio Lopez for pushing him to be a faster swimmer.
O’Connor is happy with his own turnaround, but he’d rather focus on the team’s improvement.
“That’s more meaningful to me,” he said. “The transition we’ve had since I’ve been here has been a dream come true.”
It’s unlikely the team could have improved so much without O’Connor. He’s a two-time All American and he holds NU’s pool record in the 200 butterfly. He’s also the reigning Big Ten champion in the event.
Next year, O’Connor will stay in Evanston to train for the Olympic trials. He’s worried about the stiff competition, but he’s focused on attaining his goal.
“I feel I owe it to myself because I’ve spent the last 19 years of my life swimming,” he said. “I’m not going to count myself out.”
