Scholar Stories: Roberts Champions 'Team' in Pool, Applies it in IOE Major
1/27/2021 10:00:00 AM | Men's Swimming & Diving, Features
Continuing the 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 Absopure.
By Brad Rudner
University of Michigan senior Will Roberts was born to be a swimmer.
While most children learn to swim in a pool, Roberts cut his teeth sloshing about in the Magothy River, a small river located north of Annapolis, Md., that spills into the Chesapeake Bay.
Swimming, naturally, runs in the family. Will and his two younger brothers grew up under the watchful eyes of his father, Bill, who has served as head coach at the U.S. Naval Academy since 2003. Between Bill and his wife, Nicole, who managed an outdoor pool not far from the family's home, pool access was never a problem.
"It was something that really clicked," Roberts said. "Swimming was always my thing to take on. I wasn't always the best swimmer, but the people, the team, is what made me come back."
It is fitting, then, that Roberts ended up at Michigan, where the concept of team reigns supreme.
More than the infamous "The Team" speech uttered by Bo Schembechler all those years ago, it is a mindset that is drilled into every swimmer and diver that walks onto the hallowed pool deck at Canham Natatorium.
But it is also a legacy, something passed down from class to class. It now rests on Roberts, as both a senior and a captain, to continue on.
"In order to lead, you must learn," Roberts said. "If you're driven to do that, you'll find the right mindset."
Unlike some of his training partners, Roberts did not come to Michigan with the pedigree or a bevy of international swimming experience. Instead, he immersed himself fully into the team's fabled distance group and got better every year as a result.
Consider the time drops in his three signature events:
| Event | Pre-Commitment | Current | +/- |
| 500-yard Freestyle | 4:29.06 | 4:16.50 | - 12.56 |
| 1,650-yard Freestyle | 15:28.90 | 14:54.04 | - 34.86 |
| 400-yard IM | 3:58.21 | 3:45.49 | - 12.72 |
The saying, "Those Who Stay Will Be Champions," rings remarkably true for the men's swimming and diving program. Since 1986, all but one senior class -- 2007 -- has been a part of at least one Big Ten championship-winning team. The recently-graduated 2020 class, motivated by three consecutive runner-up finishes to Indiana, could have been added to that list had it not been for its dominating wire-to-wire win in the Hoosiers' home pool last year.
Any swimmer will tell you that winning a team championship takes everyone contributing, from the big guns who are virtual locks to be atop the podium to the last swimmer on the roster who fights to improve their seeding from a 'C' final to a 'B' final. Every point matters.
Of his nine career swims at the Big Ten Championships, Roberts made finals in seven of them.
"I came in knowing I'd be a small fish in a big pond," Roberts said. "I owe a lot of my success to those guys, and to Josh (White). I saw the energy they brought every day and I was really inspired by that. I wanted everything that came along with being a part of that group -- past and present."
"From day one, you see everything that Michigan embodies. Distance events are some of the most mentally tough races in swimming. I came in ready to work with no limits or barriers. From there, you can only go up."
Last March, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Roberts was ready to go to the NCAA Championships for the first time. It would have been especially sweet, too, after having just narrowly missed the cut a year before as a sophomore.
Though the season ended abruptly, Roberts at least had another shot. Upon returning home to Maryland in March, he would go for multi-mile swims in the Magothy, sometimes two to three times a day. He would be lucky if the water temperature eclipsed 50 degrees.
"It lit a fire under me," he said. "The adversity, the challenges -- that's what kept me going."
Roberts will graduate this spring with a degree in industrial and operations engineering (IOE). Per the IOE website, industrial and operations engineers use data to analyze, design and optimize -- improving decision making and shaping systems comprised of humans, machines and processes.
In other words, IOE is efficiency engineering.
"It's connecting. That's why I love it so much," Roberts said. "I wanted to connect with as many people, professors, classmates and cultures as I could. I saw IOE as a pathway to that. I'm able to take a biology class with Miles (Smachlo) or a physics class with Bora (Unalmis). I accidentally signed up for a poetry class one time. I'm like, 'What am I doing here?'"
"IOE has a diversity that people underestimate. It's not the biggest major, but you do meaningful things. For me, it was the path to learning."
Between his studies and swimming, Roberts works with the Marine Renewable Energy Laboratory (MRELab). The current focus of the MRELab is to study the underlying science of the VIVACE Converter, a device invented to harness the hydrokinetic energy of ocean/river currents/tides.
Participating in the lab, Roberts says, is like studying an entirely different major.
"Vortex-induced vibrations are usually a destructive force, but we're trying to control that motion," he explained. "Imagine the motion a fish makes when it's in the water. We want to harness that instability and turn it into renewable, clean energy."
Community also is a big part of who Roberts is. He helps organize team-wide community service projects, from volunteering their time teaching swimming lessons at the Ann Arbor YMCA to helping eliminate invasive species at Mary Beth Doyle Park. Roberts and teammate AJ Bornstein spent time on their own coaching a Little League baseball team at Burns Park.
"It's about understanding your community," Roberts said. "You go to class and go to practice, but doing acts of service opens you up to a whole new group of people. That's what makes it well-rounded. Ann Arbor is a place where people want you to thrive."
Roberts is in no hurry to join the "real world." He plans to pursue a master's degree and continue swimming, thanks to the NCAA's decision to award an extra year of eligibility to all student-athletes in light of the changes brought about by COVID-19. Whether that is at Michigan or elsewhere has yet to be determined.
In the meantime, his focus is entirely on leading this team into the postseason, and navigating them through whatever changes COVID-19 may bring.
"I'm a big believer in staying the course," Roberts said. "I want to be a college kid making a difference. My future is unknown, but I'm OK with that. I've learned to take things one day at a time, one lap at a time. That's how you race, and that's what I'm doing with my life."
Players Mentioned
