Scholar Stories: Ransford Seamlessly Blends Engineering, Elite Swimming
1/24/2018 9:19:00 AM | Men's Swimming & Diving, Features
Continuing the popular series that began in 2016-17, each Wednesday MGoBlue.com will highlight a Michigan student-athlete and their academic pursuits. These are our Scholar-Athlete Stories, presented by Prairie Farms.
University of Michigan men's swimmer PJ Ransford has always been one step ahead.
For starters, he's just really smart. He came into college with 43 credits, technically making him an academic sophomore. Having that big of a head start allowed him to graduate last month a semester early. Now a graduate student in the College of Engineering, Ransford will add a master's degree to his mantle in December.
The kicker? He did it all with a 4.0 GPA and received the NCAA Elite 90 Award last March, an honor given to the student-athlete with the highest GPA that qualifies for each of the NCAA's 90 championships. He'll likely be the favorite this year, too.
His accolades in the pool are no less impressive. Unquestionably one of the best distance swimmers in the country, Ransford has done everything short of making the U.S. Olympic Team. He's a former Big Ten champion in the 1,650-yard freestyle (2016), a two-time CSCAA All-American in the same race (2015, 2017) and a current member of the U.S. National Team. On top of all that, he was voted as one of the three captains for the U-M men's swimming and diving team this season, perhaps the biggest honor of them all.
When he starts applying for jobs, his resume will not be lacking. Ransford makes it look easy, but he says it's anything but.
"No, it's really tough," said Ransford, holding back laughs. "Engineering is not easy. My parents always stressed the importance of doing well in school. That stuck with me. I've actually done better in college being on my own, away from home, and realizing that what I do here would affect the rest of my life."
"I want to do well because I'd be upset if I didn't. I'm here to learn and to swim fast."
That sentiment, in a nutshell, encapsulates the swimming and diving team: high standards in the pool, even higher standards in the classroom. Last year, the program was represented on the Academic All-Big Ten team by 28 student-athletes, more than 70 percent of the eligible roster.
Over the years, the swimming and diving program has developed a flourishing relationship with the College of Engineering. Of the 41 student-athletes who have declared majors, 11 are studying some form of engineering.
Interested in engineering since middle school, Ransford wanted to see during the recruiting process was how team members balanced swimming and studying. Luckily for him -- and for Michigan -- the two guys he sought to replicate were Olympians Connor Jaeger and Sean Ryan, both of whom would go on to graduate with mechanical engineering degrees.
"If you are a swimmer and are interested in engineering, Michigan is just a good place to be," he said. "I've heard of coaches who steer kids away from certain majors during recruiting because they think it'll be too difficult to balance. Nothing like that would happen here, especially with engineering. People see the success we have. That speaks for itself.
"I looked at them (Jaeger and Ryan), saw what they were doing and said, 'That's a place I want to be.' They care about school, they care about swimming, and they're doing well in both."
Ransford got to Ann Arbor in the fall of 2014 as the rookie looking up to a couple Olympians. Though Jaeger and Ryan had both exhausted their eligibility, they stuck around to train for two years until departing for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
The roles are now reversed. Ransford is the senior member of the distance group and is mentoring two Olympians younger than him in sophomore Felix Auböck (Austria) and freshman Ricardo Vargas (Mexico).
"When I got here, I just wanted to do what everyone else did because that's how they got so good. I followed their lead," Ransford said. "The people in the distance group change over time, but the hard work is just the same. That doesn't change. We've been so lucky to recruit guys who are fast swimmers with great team-first attitudes."
Ransford has been involved in some pretty memorable races. He exploded onto the scene as a freshman, finishing second in the mile at the NCAA Championships in a race he very nearly won from an outside lane.
"If I had to swim that race over again, I would've done the same thing," he explained. "It was one of those things, I hadn't done a best time in the mile all season. I thought I was going to crush it at Big Tens, but I was a few seconds over. I got to NCAAs and Josh (White, associate head coach) and I came up with a different strategy. Part of the way into the race, I take a quick look around between strokes and I'm thinking myself, 'Wow, I'm in the lead right now.' It gets your adrenaline flowing. I don't think I would've swam that fast if I wasn't in that position."
Ransford finished runner-up in the 1,650-yard freestyle as a freshman at the 2015 NCAA Championships.
Last year, Ransford finished sixth in the mile at the NCAA Championships. That race will not soon be forgotten because four men clocked times better than the previous NCAA record. Among them was Auböck, who finished runner-up just like Ransford did as a freshman two years earlier.
For elite runners, a mile takes only four laps around the track and can be done in four minutes. For swimmers, doing a mile -- 66 laps in a 25-yard pool -- can be daunting.
"It's funny explaining it. Even mid-distance swimmers don't quite get it," Ransford said. "If I'm doing the mile, I get to lap 33 and I'm halfway done. If I'm doing the 1,000-yard freestyle and I get to lap 33, I only have seven laps left. You pick up the pace at that point, get into the sprint. To do a 500 and then have a 1,000 left, it's a real challenge. You have to go easier than you think. It's such a long race. It takes a toll on your body."
Not unlike long races, Ransford says the key to engineering is having the right strategy. When faced with a complex engineering problem, one must be able to break it down into simpler parts. The math and physics fundamentals, those can be learned. But excelling requires being an outside-the-box thinker.
For his ME 567 class, Ransford helped build a robotic arm capable of drawing, mimicking movements via a computer interface. For ME 450, he helped create a system to remotely control the throttle and brake pedal in a Baja vehicle so it could eventually be driven autonomously. The vehicle, which is like a dune buggy, was to be used by a few Ph.D. students to conduct research for military applications, like driving at high speeds through a battlefield.
Ransford also worked with the Michigan Bicentennial Archive Team (M-BARC) last year on designing a time capsule that will be launched into outer space. About the size of a football, the capsule will be filled with interviews from over 1,000 students, faculty and alumni, as well as small relevant artifacts. It's to stay in space for 100 years until it's retrieved by future U-M students.
Two of Ransford's projects: the drawing robot (left) and the throttle and brake pedal system.
Currently, Ransford is taking classes in cellular engineering, occupational biomechanics and nanotechnology. He's also working in a biomechanics research lab.
"I really like biomechanics and robotics," he said. "If I could figure out some way to combine those two, the interaction between robotics and people, that would be ideal. It's really specific. I'm not sure too many jobs like that exist."
Given his credentials, would anyone be surprised if a company created a job specifically for him? But before turning his attention to jobs, Ransford is focused on being at his best for the upcoming Big Ten and NCAA championships, his last swims as a collegiate athlete.
Even with those at the forefront, don't expect his grades to slip. This is a guy who can't remember the last time he got a B.
Plus, he has two more graduations to walk in: at the College of Engineering (in the spring, for his undergraduate degree) and the university's winter commencement (in December, for his graduate degree).
"My parents laugh because they're like, 'You just did this so you can graduate three times in a row.'"
And each one of them will be worth it.
Players Mentioned
