Q&A with UM swimmer Bjorn Boquist

Jan. 27, 2003

What are some of the highlights you’ve had here at UM?I guess going to BIG EAST freshman year was good. But after that (the meet) has had cut times so now you have to make cut times to go to the conference meet and I haven’t been able to make it. Before, it was up to the team’s discrimination who they could take and so we pretty much took everybody so I was able to go. But then the conference thought that too many people were there, that the meet was too crowded and bunched up so they cut it down with cut times.

How about since then?I guess last year when I broke my ankle and I was swimming with crutches and I couldn’t do starts. I guess that was kind of funny…

How did you swim with crutches?I was able to swim, but I couldn’t dive in the water. I would have to crutch up to the block and then jumo in one-footed. Then I could swim, but I would have to, like, push off the wall.

How did you break it?Playing football. I was doing my best Andre Johnson impression (laughs). But, yeah, I was playing football with my buddies.

You said that UM’s winning the national championship (the Rose Bowl) was a highlight for you. Is UM’s overall sports culture something that’s important to you?Yeah. Being an athlete, all of the athletics are pretty important to you. Obviously, our football team is great and it was great to see them win a national championship.

Are you able to get to the home games?Yeah, usually. Sometimes we’ll have swim meets right beforehand. So it’s a pain to go to the meet and then have to jump in our cars and go to the Orange Bowl, park, and then try to run in. (I went on the road) to Florida State my freshman year. We had a swim meet before that game and then we got to go to the swim meet afterwards.

What do you think about your experience so far at UM as a swimmer?Well, obviously, I really wish we’d had a guys’ team to train with. That was really unfortunate that the guys’ team got cut. I mean, I love our girls, I wouldn’t trade them for the world. It’s been great training with them, there fun. It’s a great team.

Your from Bloomington (Ind.) and coach Sweeney went to Indiana, was there any connection between the two of you?Yeah. (Former UM assistant coach) Chris Plumb was my high school coach my junior year in high school. He really had a big influence on me. Before I met him, I didn’t really care about swimming that much. It was just something that I did in high school for the heck of it. But he made a lot faster and made me think about it. He told me that if I reall tried hard, I could be good at it. I listened to him. When he left my high school that was hard because he was such a good coach and we were all really sad when he left. But then he started recruiting me to come down here. I came down here on a recruiting trip in January. I got sunburned pretty bad. So when I came back I was like ‘Man, I’ve got to go there.’ I saw LL Cool J down on South Beach and that was pretty fun.

What convinced you to want to come down here?Not just the weather, I liked the school and I liked the program. I knew that it was good coming because I knew the coach. I knew what he was like and I knew what he expected.

When you got down here, what different challenges did you have to adjust to?It’s definitely a huge cultural difference. You get down here and it’s a total culture shock. Everyone is in much more of a hurry down here than they are in Indiana. Everyone there is kind of cool and layed back, but everyone down here has schedule and everybody has to be somewhere and they have to be there fast.

How did you first get interested in swimming?It actually started my freshman year in high school. My parents sat me down and said, ‘You’re not doing anything in high school. You need to get involved in something. My freshman year in high school, I wasn’t involved in anything. I just went to high school and that was it. I wasn’t really doing anything and I was kind of a couch potato, so they said I needed to get involved in something. So I just decided to swim because I’d done it in eighth grade and I’d always kind of liked swimming. So, I just started my sophomore year.

How did you get to be so good at it?I think part of the reason that I got so much attention is because I’d only been swimming since my sophomore year and my times between the beginning of my sophomore year and the end of my junior dropped a whole bunch. There was definite potential. And then also being tall and skinny, I had like a swimmer type build. I guess I’m just built for it.

Why did you want to continue in college?I knew I had to do something in college, because there’s so much free time. My brother was a rower and he did crew at Purdue. He had really good time with his teammates and I looked at that. A lot of kids want to go to college and just party all the time…I like to party, but I knew I’d have to do something else.

What are you doing now to improve?We have a meet (coming up) against Indian River and hopefully I’ll qualify for the BIG EAST. I’m two seconds off now in the backstroke. That’s quite bit, but this is the time of the season when you drop a lot of weight and get into shape. Hopefully that will make a difference.

What sorts of different things do swimmers do during “tapering?”During the season we train so hard. We go to like three morning practices a week and all this stuff. Then during taper session, we cut back on the yardage. Like, recently we were doing morning practice and doing probably close to six to 10 thousand yards a day. Then (during tapering) we started going like five thousand. Then 4,500. I’ll gradually go down in yardage and what that does is just give your body rest because it gets so broken down during the season. You gradually go down to where you’re basically doing nothing and you’re just resting. Then when you shave, it’s like a totally different feeling in the water.

?So what do you have to do to get that time down?I just have to have a really good swim and be focused. I have to hit all of my turns and have a good start.

What’s the most challenging part of swimming for you?When your body just doesn’t want to go anymore, you know, and your lungs are burning and you’ve got water going up your nose and your legs are on fire. You don’t think you can go anymore. The hardest part is just telling your frame that you have to keep going.

You said that you treat swimming like a hobby, but swimming is kind of a grueling hobby. Why do you stick with it?I think breaking my ankle was actually a good thing because it really disciplined me and focused me. After that, I started doing really well. I think I would have had a good shot at making BIG EAST. Then I broke my ankle in the middle of the season and I was so mad and so down on myself. I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to do it right this time,’ so I trained really hard all summer and I’ve trained really hard this year. I’m pretty sure that I’ll get close to that time (that I need).

What went through your mind when you broke it?Before we went and played I was like, ‘Man I don’t know if I want to play tackle football, I’d rather play like two-hand touch or something.’ So as soon as I knew I was hurt, I was like ‘Man, I’m such an idiot.’ It was basically like, if I could take back the last 40 minutes I would never have played football.

Does swimming help you academically? Does it help you stay focused?Actually, I think it used to be kind of a distraction like my freshman and sophomore year. But then my junior and senior year it really helped me. I guess you get older and more mature and you know how to use your time better. During my freshman and sophomore years, I would just come home from swimming and just watch TV. Now it’s like I come home and see what assignments I need to do or cases I have to read. It actually helps me focus because I think if I had so much free time, I’d be like ‘Oh I can just put that off until next week.’ But if you know that you have to get to bed early, it can help you.

What other highlights have you had?This year it was great because I went back to Indiana for the Indiana Invite. I’d swam with the IU guys all summer and I have a lot of really good friends on the team. So it was really nice to have a bunch of guys behind me. I ended up swimming my fastest time ever in the backstroke. It was still two seconds off, but it was a good swim.

How was getting a chance to swim in front of family and friends?It was great. Coming home and swimming in front of my family, I think that helped me swim faster.