4x NCAA DIII Champion Tobe Obochi Goes Pro in Something Other than Swimming

Tobe Obochi owns the fastest 50 freestyle time in Division III this season, but he won’t be competing in Greensboro later this week at the 2025 NCAA Division III Championships.

A week after the MIT Winter Invitational, the 4x DIII NCAA champion flew to Seattle to start a software engineering position at Google. Obochi departed Cambridge with the top time in the country in three events: the 50 free (19.56), 100 free (43.66), and a new addition to his collegiate lineup, the 100 breaststroke (52.75).

Obochi graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering in the spring of 2024. The plan was always to pursue a master’s of engineering in electrical engineering and computer science, but whether or not he would be using his fifth year of eligibility was still up in the air. It was further complicated by the fact that he needed to finish the program in one semester to accept his job offer.

“I knew I would be coming back to MIT to study, but I knew it was only for half a year in March [2024], actually the week prior to NCAAs,” says Obochi.

Obochi started college virtually amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to campus restrictions, he didn’t arrive in Cambridge until February 2021. At that point, MIT Swim and Dive ran limited, social-distanced practices as the athletic department had canceled the winter sports season. Obochi didn’t officially compete until his sophomore year, which means he only attended three NCAA Division III Championships throughout his career. (The 2021 NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving Championships were also canceled.)

That also means Obochi is only the second most successful Division III swimmer on his team at Google. With 19 All-American honors, he trails his manager’s (Eric Triebe, WashU ‘06) career total of 26.

In the end, Obochi’s decision to swim through the fall semester was an easy one. Only competing through midseason meant there wouldn’t be a chance to add to his numerous accolades, but it did mean four more months with the team.

“I knew it would be difficult to leave, but I decided to use my fifth year because I wasn’t really sure what to do if I wasn’t swimming,” says Obochi. “It’s definitely hard to put into words exactly what MITSD meant and still means to me. The word most people go to is family.

“I grew up from a teenager who would skip kick sets and cool down due to my experiences with the team throughout my four years. My coaches and teammates taught me a lot about myself.”

In fact, his favorite team memory isn’t one of the four times he stood atop the podium in March; it’s a 400 medley relay he swam with three of his fraternity brothers at the 2023 NEWMAC Championships. He also successfully schemed to draw the rest of his frat to the Zesiger Center Pool, where their enthusiastic cheering earned a social media feature.

Brothers of Delta Tau Delta cheer at the 2024 NEWMAC Championships.

When a stomach bug forced him to withdraw from the final day of competition at 2023 NCAAs — which included the 100 free and 400 free relay — his first thought was that one of his teammates would be tapped for unexpected relay duty, potentially throwing off their meet routine. Of course he wanted to defend his national title, but he also missed the chance to cheer for his teammates.

Speaking with Obochi, his humility is apparent to the point of self-deprecation. For instance, when asked about his unconventional race strategy of nearly-even splitting (or negative splitting) his races, he describes himself as “soft”, “dramatic”, and “the worst surface kicker on the team for [his] first two years of college.”

Curated Splits

Now, Obochi is chasing a different type of speed. He works on Google Compute Engine Virtual Machine Accelerators, which are sold to users for accelerated computing workloads that require a lot of computing resources. Still, as one might expect of an MIT student-athlete (a demographic on which the author is allowed to comment), he remains a scholar of the sport and a self-described swim nerd.

“I was up at 7am to watch NEWMAC prelims here in Seattle, and I’ll be watching our swimmers and divers at NCAAs for sure,” says Obochi.

“Even after being done, I’ve spent more time on SwimSwam, Meet Mobile, and SwimCloud than I’d like to admit. I’ve seen the comments asking where I was the second half of the year, and I definitely saw and heard about the “he probably has the worst start and turn of any swimmer to go 19.6”. Hard to live that one down, but I do love seeing the facts that people know and the excitement for fast swimming that people have, even in Division III.”

The 2025 NCAA Division III Championships will be held March 19-22 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Obochi has provided relatively guarded predictions:

“We will not see a repeat team champion on both the men’s and the women’s side, and double-digit national records fall. Vague and slightly lukewarm takes? Maybe. Sue me.”

The MIT women were ranked #1 in the final CSCAA poll of the year and are poised to achieve a program-high finish, while the men’s team is #9. No matter what happens, Obochi will be up early before work to cheer on his team.