Who is the man who could swim a 23.49 in the 50 breast?
Fabian. Right on!
Who is the man who caught Conference USA by surprise last night?
Fabian. Can you dig it?
Who is the man who is in the junior class, a foreigner and only 19 years old?
Fabian, that’s who!
He’s a complicated man but no one understands him but his family.
Fabian Schwingenschloegl!
Ok, so we have no idea if Western Kentucky junior Fabian Schwingenschloegl can fight the way that the great Shaft does, but he’s just about as mysterious. Nor could we say for sure if that was the longest non-hyphenated last name in college swimming, but it’s the best we’ve seen so far.
After swimming a 23.49 to lead Western Kentucky’s men’s 200 medley relay to victory last night at the 2014 Conference USA Men’s Swimming & Diving “invitational” (the men’s meet isn’t technically a conference championships), we were all perplexed by one of the names we saw. For one, how to pronounce it (though when you really break it down, it’s fairly phonetic), and for two, who he was.
For now, we’ll stick to Fabian.
He’s listed as a freshman in official results, but Western Kentucky is calling him a junior by class. Update: though Western Kentucky has him listed at 19 years old, after some digging, it appears as though he may have just had some messy handwriting, and is in fact 22 years old, born in August of 1991.
He hails from Nuremberg in the Bavarian Region of Germany, and his father was a championship-level volleyball player in Germany.
In his native country, he’s been better in long course than in short course, with a 1:02.12 in the 100 meter breaststroke. he’s also been 2:08.6 in the 200 SCM breaststroke, and is a pretty good IM’er too (2:03.03 in the 200 long course).
That 100 long course time converts to a 54.1 in yards, which is a very good time, but nothing hinting at a 23.49 relay split – only Michigan’s Bruno Ortiz and Arizona’s Kevin Ortiz were faster than that at NCAA’s last season. Think about that means he outsplit. Arizona’s Carl Mickelson was a 23.69 in prelims on that relay. Nic Fink from Georgia was a 23.61. Trevor Hoyt from Cal was a 23.58.
That’s about all we know on him. He joined the team in this spring semester, and it looks like he did race in the team’s only two second-semester meets, splitting 20.69 at the end of the free relay and going 55.71 in the 100 breaststroke most recently, plus a 1:54.3 in the 200 IM and a 55.8 in the 100 breaststroke in January, but none of those times made their way into the official NCAA times database. The Western Kentucky website doesn’t have a lot of information on him, and nobody we spoke to at Western Kentucky knew a lot about him either.
For now, enjoy the ride – we, for our part, can’t wait to see what he does in his individual 100 yard breaststroke.
kevin ortiz? kevin cordes i think you meant