Correction appended
In the lanes of the SPAC pool, a small team of swimmers motors along the lengths of the pool. Wearing a purple polo, khakis and a gentle expression, head coach Bob Groseth looks over them, leaning in to talk to individual swimmers. Even as the whole team gathers around, Groseth speaks softly and calmly, the group of a dozen or so quietly listens. The serene atmosphere is hardly the intense practice you’d expect from a team that produced two Olympians and a top 10 finish just a few years ago.
The Northwestern men’s swimming and diving team, like most of Northwestern’s athletic programs, had to struggle to succeed. But, despite limited funding and a small team, Groseth has still managed to pilot the program to its best years, with help from stars Matt Grevers and Mike Alexandrov.
Northwestern never makes a big impression as an athletic powerhouse, and the swimming program was no exception. Senior Adam Breckman said that Northwestern wasn’t even on his radar when he first started researching schools.
“I hadn’t really heard a lot of things except that they had finished in the top 20, but a lot of schools can say that,” Breckman said.
When Alexandrov was applying, he said Northwestern’s reputation wasn’t in its sports. “It was just an academic school, not really a swimming school,” he said. “But I met the swimmers and Matt and we decided to give it a shot.”
If the reputation wasn’t overly impressive then, it was below recognition before Groseth arrived. When he joined the team in 1988, the most the swimming team had to show for itself was SPAC, which had just been built. It fell on Groseth to build the program from scratch.
“When I first came in, we had been last in the conference for about 15 years in a row, so there was nowhere to go but up,” he said. “The first thing I had to do was change the attitude. There was a perception that Northwestern athletics would never work, so I had to get guys to be dedicated and swim year-round.”
Groseth set to making his team focus on swimming as a priority, establishing a training program and instilling pride in the team. Over the years, the swimmers started taking ownership in the team and slowly the meets got better and they crept up in the standings. Then, one class took over.
“About five years ago, we reached critical mass,” Groseth said. “The team really dedicated themselves to making the team better.”
The 2004 class started encouraging their teammates to go to the weight room on off days and train independently in the off season. They started getting the other swimmers riled up before practice, making the usually tepid practices seem more like a football scrimmage. Grevers said that class helped make the team successful just through their leadership and pride.
“Swimmers around the world work hard, but that class was just unreal with the leadership roles they played,” he said. “I felt like we lost some leadership when that class left.”
But the tough world of Big 10 swimming isn’t a clichéd sports movie and no amount of pride and work ethic will take a team to the medal stand without an injection of talent. In 2003, Groseth got what he called a “recruiting coup” when he nabbed top-tier talents Matt Grevers and Mike Alexandrov. The headliner of the class was Grevers, who chose Northwestern because of its academic prowess.
“Like in any other sport, there are 10 or 20 ‘can’t miss’ guys,” Groseth said about Grevers. “Of those, only 3 or 4 don’t miss. Matt exceeded what a lot of people thought he could do.”
Besides raw talent, Alexandrov and Grevers brought with them a competitive drive that pushed the entire team. The two would spar in and out of the pool, challenging the other in darts, volleyball, Frisbee, really anything where it was possible to compete. But more importantly, they would push each other in the water.
“We’d challenge each other and our teammates nonstop,” Grevers said. “That’s when you get your best is when you get fired up.”
Groseth recalled that most practices would end with Grevers challenging someone to a race. Breckman said trying to swim against the stars was a challenge, but one that let the team try to top their limits.
“The expectations were that people like Matt and Mike and Kyle [Bubolz] were the best,” said Breckman. “If you wanted to be the best, you had to try and beat them.”
With that fire, the team started putting the pieces together and started their slow climb up the rankings. In 2004, the team finished third in the Big Ten and 11th at the NCAA championships, missing a top 10 finish by half a point. The next year, Alexandrov and Grevers took the team to its best season with an eight place finish at the NCAA championships. The team collected more points per swimmer than any other school and amassed 23 All-American honors, and Groseth took home NCAA Coach of the Year honors.
“That was the first year people saw that we would be competitive,” Groseth said. “Matt upset some guys, we finalled in the relays and we placed in the top 10. People looked at us and said, ‘Here’s a small team doing really well.’”
That year catapulted the swimmers to the national stage, and Grevers and Alexandrov became stars. But they wanted more than just the individual honors: a relay medal that would show the strength of the entire team. The next season, with Bubolz, the relay improved and ended up placing seventh in the 400-meter race. But the team’s small size proved to be a difficulty, and with only five swimmers qualifying for NCAA’s, their tenth place finish was remarkable.
The next year saw another recruiting victory. Bruno Barbic, a junior transfer from Washington, would complete the relay team that Grevers and Alexandrov strove for.
“We’ve always had a pretty good relay, but we didn’t necessarily have that fourth guy to put us in the winning spot,” Alexandrov said. “When we got Bruno, we were able to train as a team and see what we could put together.”
The team’s senior standouts were saving their best for last. Grevers crushed the field to win the 200 meter backstroke and Alexandrov won the 100 meter breaststroke. And in a fitting finish to their careers, Grevers and Alexandrov were able to leave with a winning relay team, as they, with Barbic and Bubolz, took the NCAA championship in the 400 medley relay.
“When we finally won that relay, I felt like the greatest accomplishment finally came,” Grevers said. “I could have gone to any school and gotten the individual, but the relay was something that Mike and I took pride in because it was something that we started from scratch from sophomore year. It felt like we’d made a change in the history of Northwestern swimming.”
All in all, those swimmers left Northwestern swimming with more accolades than the program had ever seen. A brief look at the display case in SPAC shows how impressive the era was. Amid the gold medals and plaques are pictures of Grevers, Alexandrov, Barbic and Bubolz, smiling and cheering as they touch the wall and win.
After graduating, Grevers and Alexandrov decided to build on their swimming careers. For all their competition, Alexandrov always had one feat to lord over Grevers – he had been to the Olympics, competing for his native Bulgaria in 2004.
“I got to give him a little bit of crap because I got to go to Athens in 2004,” Alexandrov said. “That was a big push that he took from me. We motivated each other to both go to Beijing in 2008.”
Grevers went to Arizona to train, where he was able to push himself against swimmers as driven and competitive as him, as well as enjoy warm weather. Qualifying for the Olympic team meant fulfilling a dream he had for most of his life.
“Even when I was 10 years old, I was thinking about it. I broke a record and I thought, ‘I’m the fastest in the country’s history, so why wouldn’t I pursue it?’” Grevers said. “Ever since I was 10, I thought there was the opportunity there.”
The two swimmers went to the Olympics where, thanks to Michael Phelps, swimming was the main attraction. To Grevers, that meant the events were that much more exciting.
“There was more energy in the pool,” he said. “You’ve never seen so much pride. Every competitor was so proud to represent where they came from.”
Alexandrov, with the Bulgarian team, competed in three events, improving on all of his times. But Grevers seized the international spotlight, taking two gold medals and a silver, finishing behind world record holder Aaron Peirsol in the 200 meter backstroke. For Groseth, the moment filled him with pride and hope that one day a swimmer he had coached could be the best in the world. For Grevers, the entire experience was moving.
“Standing on the podium while they raised our flag – it was more emotional than I expected,” he said. “The culmination of all my hard work came down to that moment.”
Grevers is continuing his training in Arizona and Alexandrov is switching over to Team USA, competing for the country that he called his “second home that’s now officially my home.” He will also be continuing to work with Groseth, since the coach that stresses individuality and knows him best.
“I like to be able to communicate with my coach and with [Groseth] it’s not ‘my way or the highway,’ Alexandrov said. “We get to talk to him and discuss it with him.”
And what of the team they left behind? Without their two superstars, the team barely lost a beat, finishing 12th in the NCAA championships. But now that Barbic and Bubolz have left, the team is in what Groseth called a “rebuilding period.”
“Right now, we’re setting the foundation to getting back in two or three years,” he said. “We’re going through the same process of taking ownership of the team, trying to regain that sense of pride.”
Breckman echoed that sentiment, saying that the team has started embracing the idea that success is a team effort.
“The past couple of years, we just knew we had the best guys and weren’t too concerned about everyone else,” he said. “Now there’s a sense of urgency and we have to be bigger and meaner in our training to be competitive. We have to put in extra time and extra effort.”
There’s Eric Nilsson, who was nicknamed “The Robot” by his teammates because he automatically turns in a great practice and pushes everyone. Peter Park has a reputation for yelling in practices, getting his teammates’ energy up.
It’s a situation that mirrors the team’s transition before the coup that brought Grevers and Alexandrov to the team. And although the program is facing a lack of depth (there are only 14 swimmers and three divers compared to a normal team of 20-25) and has no superstar, there’s still reason to hope.
“We’re young, so I’d be lying if I said yes, we’ll be back this year,” Groseth said. “But guys are embracing the work part. After the work, we start setting our goals.”
Correction, Oct. 20 at 10:25 a.m.: The original version of this article stated that Mike Alexandrov swam for the Belgian national team in the Olympics. He competed for Bulgaria.