University of Tennessee Athletics
NCAA SWIMMING QUALIFIER PROFILE: MICHAEL WOLFE
March 14, 2007 | Men's Swimming & Diving
March 14, 2007
In preparation for the NCAA Swimming Championships, Utsports.com will publish several profiles to spotlight nine Tennessee swimmers who qualified for the 2007 NCAA Championships in Minneapolis, Minn. Each day a new release will focus on a new swimmer to honor his accomplishments, to peer into the personality of a UT swimmer and to learn about his preparatory thoughts on the championships that will be held March 15-17. The swimmers will be highlighted in the following order: Brad Boswell, Andrew Engle, Octavio Alesi, Jim Dabney, Nolan Morrell, Barry Murphy, Jeff Sudbury, Michael Wolfe and Andrew Thirlwell. Today's profile focuses on junior Michael Wolfe.
Junior Michael Wolfe is what many consider the "Renaissance Man." Wolfe began his athletic career with innumerable sports to eventually top it all off when he graduates in 2008 with a mechanical engineering degree in prestigious Engineer College at the University of Tennessee.
"When I was really young, I did a whole bunch of sports," Wolfe said. "I played soccer, tee-ball, gymnastics, ballet, swimming and basketball - just a lot of different sports. I just stuck with swimming; that was the one I was best at, so I just stuck with it all the way through. When I was 12 years old or so, the last two sports it came down to was soccer and swimming. It became to hard to manage two sports, so I dropped soccer and kept on swimming."
Wolfe then made a high school transfer and collected a couple of state titles in swimming.
"My first years of high school, I went to a private school, and we didn't have a swim team there," Wolfe said. "So, I only swam club team. When I swam club, I did pretty well, but I wanted to do high school swimming; that's when I transferred to a public school. I won the 500 free in state and 100 fly, I think. I won those events at State and helped the team out. It was a lot of fun."
Wolfe then made an extensive college search that included just as many schools as sports he participated in as a kid.
"The colleges I took my official visits to were Texas, Minnesota, Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina State," Wolfe said. "I took a trip to NC State, mostly because I liked the coach there who transferred to Auburn. NC State is a pretty mediocre school as far as swimming goes but they had a good engineering program. After Baltimore Nationals during my senior year, we took a trip to all these colleges - North Carolina State, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Texas. We just traveled around and took a whole bunch of unofficial visits."
When the decision came down to the wire, UT seemed to be the best choice in Wolfe's opinion.
"UT was the best choice because of the coaches," Wolfe said. "They seemed really knowledgeable at what they did. The new pool was definitely a pushing factor. But the guys were also a lot of fun to hang around."
Swimming, however, is only a portion of Wolfe's life. As mentioned before, Wolfe's interest was in engineering which derived from family influences.
"My mom, dad and a bunch of uncle are engineers," Wolfe said. "So, it's in the blood."
The variety of engineers is as equally impressive as the number of his college visits and childhood sports.
"I'm a mechanical engineer, my mom is a mechanical engineer and my dad is a chemical engineer," Wolfe said. "One uncle is a metallurgical engineer and another is an electrical engineer with a master's in biomedical engineering."
Wolfe's parents do not engage the athletic lifestyle as intensely as he does.
"My dad only does recreational swimming and my mom likes to play ping-pong," Wolfe said.
Balancing an intense academic life and a collegiate sport, however, is not easy, as Wolfe would insist, but his first years came easy because of a solid high school education that offered numerous AP courses.
"Most of the first two years were automatic because I took a lot of AP classes in high school," Wolfe said. "I had already covered all the stuff I studied freshman and sophomore years, now it is becoming more demanding. This year, my junior year, has thickened because I'm taking 13 credit hours of class now. It is a lot harder than the 15 hours I took my freshman year. It's become tougher because labs are in the afternoon, but I'm still working around it."
Wolfe now finds himself at a break from the academic life as the NCAA Championships take place March 15-17 in Minneapolis, Minn., during UT's spring break. Wolfe is prepared and eager for the championships later this week, especially after having missed last year's competition due to injury.
"I'm pretty excited about NCAAs because last year I busted my knee and hurt my ear," Wolfe said. "I'm excited to see how I can do on a good taper. At SECs, I only tapered for a week and I did pretty well."
The injuries came outside of the pool which hindered the latter portion of Wolfe's sophomore season.
"I was playing a game and I was running around a pool table, and my knee popped out of position," Wolfe said. "Then after that, I somehow got an ear infection and it turns out that it was perforated in my ear drum. So, I couldn't do anything for a while."
After time to recover and an impressive junior campaign, Wolfe has made the necessary steps to be geared up for this year's championship season.
"I think I'm pretty well prepared for the NCAAs," Wolfe said. "Most of the guys didn't taper down for SECs, I didn't taper down for SECs. I feel like I've still got a pretty good base to work on and to taper down to because sometimes whenever you taper you lose a little bit of aerobic ability."
Wolfe will be swimming the 200 backstroke, 200 butterfly, 100 backstroke and 800 freestyle relay in the 2007 NCAA Championships beginning Thursday at noon.
The 2007 NCAA Championships, again, are held March 15-17 in Minneapolis, Minn. The next profile will feature sophomore Andrew Thirlwell.
Players Mentioned
