Dr. Wyatt Hodges: Ph.D In and Out of the Pool

With the world shutting down, we’re reaching into our archives and pulling some of our favorite stories from the SwimSwam print edition to share online. If you’d like to read more of this kind of story, you can subscribe to get a print (and digital) version of SwimSwam Magazine here. This story was originally published in the 2018 Summer Preview edition of SwimSwam Magazine.

“Utter wreck.”

That’s how Wyatt Hodges would describe his emotional state at the last collegiate meet of his career.

“I got 17th in the 100 breast for the third straight year, so didn’t score. That was disappointing,” he said. “But the 200 breast, that was — that was my event. And I think when I swam that race, I just shut down.”

This was at the 2012 Big Ten Championships. Hodges, a Missouri native who had been a standout swimmer in his region, had competed for Purdue University at the tournament every year since his freshman season, with dreams of one day qualifying for and competing at the NCAA Championships.

“I placed a lot of pressure on myself, and I crumbled under that pressure,” Hodges said adding that “it was heartbreaking.”

“My NCAA career was over; I was never going to make the NCAA meet,” he said. Purdue’s head coach, Dan Ross, “thought I was just straight-up done swimming after that … His assumption after seeing that race was that I was never going to touch a pool again.”

But Hodges had unfinished business. The summer before that, in 2011, he had qualified for the Olympic Trials in the 100 and 200 breaststroke, and he wasn’t leaving the pool until he went off the blocks in Omaha.

He said that after his junior year of high school, “I remember writing those times on my wall in my bedroom, and I wanted to go to that meet — at that point that was my dream.”

Hodges got to live his dream by going to Omaha and competing in the 100 and 200 breast. In the 100 he went 1:03.5, a best time by about a tenth of a second, which, while good, was disappointing overall. The 200 was again a “mental” swim for him with the pressure of it potentially being the last race of his career. The time was not good by his standards, and he was ultimately DQ’d.

Feeling defeated, Hodges returned to West Lafayette, Indiana, to figure out where he was going to go from there.

At the conclusion of the summer, Hodges decided to train for an Olympic distance triathlon. He thought triathlons would be the next thing he would focus on while taking a fifth year to finish his degree at Purdue. One day while he was riding on a stationary bike, he saw the club team, Boilermaker Aquatics, practicing in the rec pool. Exit triathlons.

“TJ was super excited to have me,” Hodges said. “I don’t think I lifted very much during that time — I would just swim with the kids once a day, when I could. I went to senior state and went a best time in the 100 breast. I was just doing this because it was still fun to me and I still wanted to be at the pool.”

Once he completed his degree from Purdue, Hodges picked up his life and headed to the University of California, Berkeley, to start his Ph.D., still working out and staying fit through the transition. He started swimming with a group called Fuego that swam at noon at the Cal pool, and while he enjoyed the more fitness-oriented workouts and rich company, something was lacking.

“I remember a moment where I was listening to some song on my iPod that I had listened to maybe before a race in college, and in that moment I remember thinking: ‘I want this. I want to be racing. I want to be competing,’” Hodges said. “And at that moment, I didn’t know how it was going to look or how it was going to happen, but I just wanted it.”

After this epiphany, Hodges started swimming more seriously. Trying to train himself to get back in racing form, he mostly swam on his own, at times having the company of another Cal postgrad when their time at the pool coincided. Realizing that this lifestyle was becoming less sustainable as time went on but still desiring to compete at the highest level he could, Hodges approached Cal men’s head coach, Dave Durden.

“I went and talked to Dave and said I still have goals in this sport, I have things I want to accomplish, it’s important to me,” Hodges said. “I don’t know if that’s what Dave heard exactly, but whatever Dave heard he identified with, and he said, ‘Yeah, you can come and roll with us.’”

Hodges started training with the Cal men as a postgrad in April 2014. That summer, he requalified for nationals, went to nationals, and went a best time in the 100 breast. At that point, he knew he wanted to go to the 2016 Olympics Trials.

Throughout 2015-16, Hodges stayed extremely regimented, pulling nine water workouts a week, plus gym sessions, in addition to fulfilling his graduate classes and research requirements. Some semesters, his program also included being a teaching assistant.

“I think Wyatt comes from the mindset of: If I work harder in the water, I’m going to get faster,” Durden said. “I think that’s a general mindset that a lot of swimmers have.”

This workload started to take a toll on Hodges’s physical and emotional states, and he would often suffer through workouts or become unproductive in his lab work.

As Trials approached, the looming 1:03.69 cut for the 100 breaststroke was becoming more and more daunting. Since the qualifying period started in October 2014, Hodges had gone 1:03.7 to 1:04.5 nearly 10 times. And then, at the Atlanta Classic in May 2016, he touched the wall at 1:03.69 on the money, booking his second trip to Omaha for the 2016 Olympic Trials.

“I’ve swam three races at Olympic Trials between 2012 and 2016, and I’ve cried after every one of them,” Hodges said. “I wish I would have been able to enjoy it a little more.”

Again feeling frustration after his performance at Olympic Trials, more so this time after spending years trying to get to this point only to (by his standards) come up short of a good swim, the question of what’s next was presented yet again. After speaking with Durden, Hodges continued to swim but stopped doing doubles.

“That was the thing I really saw him grow with,” Durden recalled. “Just: ‘OK, I don’t need to do what everyone else is doing, in order for me, Wyatt, to swim as fast as I can. A lot of swimmers fall into that trap … and, frankly, no, because Wyatt’s life is different than any other swimmer in our program.”

Hodges improved in and out of the pool. He started to feel good about his work as a graduate student. With only one practice a day, he could more easily focus on making small changes and having quality workouts.

“Sometime in 2016-17 I remember thinking: ‘You know what? I’m not doing doubles. It is very unlikely that I’m going to get more physically fit than I already am at age 27. So I need to make technical improvements if I want to get better,’” Hodges said.

Though he had qualified for World Championship Trials in 2017 in Indianapolis, he thought it best to maintain his graduate work and focus on a different goal in the pool. At the end of the summer in 2017, he went to the U.S. Open in East Meadow, New York.

“I went to New York, and I went a best time in the 50 breast,” Hodges said. “My 100 breast was not that great — actually, I wouldn’t call that meet a success. But I remember just having fun when I was there. I just had a great time.”

As Hodges was enjoying swimming without as much pressure on his times or to perform up to a certain standard, the decisions circling around it became much easier.

“Again, after that, it was like, do I want to continue?” Hodges said. “I wasn’t really sure, but then Dave included me on the email with the schedule at the beginning of the fall, so it was like, aw hell, why not.”

Durden said: “There’s a ton of value that Wyatt brings to our deck, to our practice, to our environment, day in day out.”

In fall 2017, Hodges began to notice the technical changes he had diligently been thinking about paying off. He was beginning to do things in practice he hadn’t done since college. Then he started doing things he had never done in practice ever.

He had started incorporating race visualization into his pre-race routine and meditating weekly, both things that helped with the mental side of racing. And in the midst of it all, he walked across the stage at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley and was hooded as a doctor of mechanical engineering in May 2018.

Three weeks later, Hodges is rested, shaved, and standing behind the blocks in Santa Clara, California. He had swum a 2:16 200 breast — a lifetime best by four seconds — the day before but was disqualified. Perhaps years ago, this would have been devastating, even meet-altering for him. But this time it only added fuel to the fire for today. And today, the fire is roaring.

Wyatt Hodges (photo: Mike Lewis)

Hodges swims in the heats of the 100 breast with numerous cheering sections going wild up and down the 50-meter pool. At 28, less than a month after getting his doctorate, he touches in 1:01.8, a personal best by nearly two seconds.

It was the swim he knew he had in him, and the one he had felt was there for so long. It was the swim of his dreams.

Many expect Hodges to now feverishly chase the Olympic dream, as that swim puts him in a place to potentially vie for a spot on the Tokyo 2020 team, but now the job hunt is taking precedence for the recent grad. Yet as his future in the sport is uncertain once again, he now has the wisdom to look forward with confidence. He is more certain than ever about where his priorities lie.

“More and more, the motivation has been because I love swimming and less about goals,” Hodges said. “I still have goals, and those drive me when I’m at the pool, but that’s not necessarily my biggest motivation now. I just love being at the pool and practicing and working out and trying to get better.”