Winnetkan Conor Dwyer, seen here swimming the butterfly, will compete in his second Olympic Games in early August. The Loyola Academy graduate and former competitor for the Lake Forest Swim Club qualified in two events (200-meter freestyle and 400 free). PHOTOGRAPHY BY USA SWIMMING
The swimmer from Loyola Academy headed west to check out a college. This was in the 2006-07 school year, the swimmer’s senior year. The swimmer finished 10th in the 200-yard freestyle and sixth as a member of a pair of relay teams (200 medley, 200 free) at his final state meet.
Not bad. Not spectacular.
He wanted to introduce himself to the college’s swimming coach during his visit.
“The coach wouldn’t even meet with him,” Cindy Dell, still perplexed and a Lake Forest Swim Club (LFSC) coach, recalls.
The coach wouldn’t meet with Winnetka resident and LFSC member Conor Dwyer, future two-time NCAA champion [at the University of Florida], future Olympic gold medalist [at the 2012 Summer Games in London], future Olympic qualifier at next month’s 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Coaches everywhere like to tell the Conor Dwyer Story to any athlete within earshot. One of the story’s messages: Never, ever let mediocre results keep you from envisioning big, big dreams.
“His growth and development got on a slower track than the growth and development of other swimmers,” Mo Sheehan, LFSC executive director/head coach, says. “Same with his work. But he was prepared when his body was ready, prepared to train hard and do whatever it took to get better, to get faster. He could handle our workouts. He liked them. The tougher they got, the more he thrived. You’d ask him to do 500 crunches, and he’d do those and 1,000 more before going to bed.
“He had a lot of passion to improve,” she adds, “and he blossomed. He’s still blossoming.”
Dwyer, 27, joined the LFSC in his junior year at Loyola Academy and represented the club at the 2008 Olympic trials in Omaha, Nebraska.
“Conor,” Dell says, “started opening eyes at a meet in Nashville [Tennessee] after his senior season at Loyola. He’d made the ‘A’ final in an event. Then, in a Grand Prix meet, before the trials [in ’08], Conor swam under a trials cut. Every time he raced he got better, leaps-and-bounds better. That’s why I called [University of Iowa men’s swimming coach] Marc Long and told him, ‘You’ve got to take a look at this kid.’ ”
Dwyer became an Iowa Hawkeye. Dwyer ranks third on the program’s all-time list in the 200-yard free (1:35.27) and fourth all-time in the 100-yard free (43.67). The son of Patrick Dwyer and former Florida State University swimmer Jeanne Dwyer (nee Dowdle) transferred to the University of Florida before his junior year. All he did as a Gator was touch first in the 200 free and first in the 500 free at the NCAA Championships in 2010 and earn NCAA Swimmer of the Year honors after the 2010 and 2011 seasons.
“You could tell, immediately, he was a talent,” Dell says. “Great strokes, great technique, and he moved through the water so effortlessly. And he had that burst, that extra burst, at the end of his races. Fabulous. He still has that burst.”
Dwyer placed fifth in the 400-meter (3:46.39) and swam the second leg of the 800-meter relay at the 2012 London Games. Ryan Lochte swam the first leg, Ricky Berens the third. Some guy named Michael Phelps took care of the anchor leg.
The quartet clocked a 6:59.7, electric enough for the gold medal.
Dell and some 70 friends and family members of Dwyer attended the 2016 Olympic trials in Omaha, Nebraska, June 26-July 3. Some of the doors at the pool facility, CenturyLink Center, feature images of past Olympians. There is a Conor Dwyer door. It got touched. Often.
“We’d all meet at the Hilton, across the street [from CenturyLink], before each session, wearing our Conor Dwyer T-shirts (‘Dwyer, ’16’),” Dell says of the Conor Dwyer contingent of fans. “And then we’d walk, together, and enter through the Conor Dwyer door, always the Conor Dwyer door.”
Their 6-foot-5, 194-pound hero sped to runner-up and Olympic-qualifying finishes in the 200-meter free (1:45.67) and 400-meter free (3:44.66) events. The 200 free was super close, 19-year-old Townley Haas of NOVA Virginia Aquatics edging Dwyer by one-hundredth of a second. Haas and Dwyer might be 800 free relay mates in Rio.
“He certainly turned into a great athlete and a great competitor,” Sheehan says. “Conor had such a great approach to training when he worked with us, getting ramped up the way he did during workouts. He has talent and a great work ethic. Not many have both of those qualities.”
Dwyer, born in Evanston, lives in California and trains with the Trojan Swim Club. He did much of his pre-Olympic trials training in Colorado Springs.
Folks from the North Shore, though, raised him, shaped him, impacted him. Sheehan and Dell challenged him at LFSC workouts. They watched him knife, knife, knife in lanes. Watched his times melt. When he was out of the water?
They noticed a different guy.
“The nicest guy in the world, with the nicest family,” Dell says of Dwyer. “Humble as humble can be. There’s not a show-off bone in his body. Low-key as a person, but he is tenacious as a trainer, tenacious as a competitor.
“It was so special,” she adds, “to be a part of Conor’s swim-career puzzle.”
Conor Dwyer