About Me

Born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina I started swimming at the age of 4, with my mom as coach, on my neighborhood summer league team.  I started swimming competitively at the age of 9 and have been doing it ever since.

I attended The University of Texas at Austin, graduating in the fall of 2010 with a degree in Finance.  Although I didn’t win any individual NCAA titles, I was a part of the 800 Free National Champion relay my junior and senior year.  I share American Records in the 400 and 800 Freestyle Relays with the University of Texas.  As captain my senior year, and after battling through a norovirus that struck our team including myself 2 days before NCAA, we won the NCAA Championships.  This was the 10th Swimming and Diving National Championship won by the University of Texas, and the 10th of our head coach Eddie Reese.

The summer after my sophomore year I qualified for the 2008 U.S.A. Olympic team by placing 3rd in the 200 freestyle.  This qualified me to swim on the prelim relay in Beijing, and a chance to swim on the finals relay. After having the fastest relay split on the prelim relay, by a few hundredths, I was lucky enough to be placed on the finals relay with Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, and Peter Vanderkaay.  In the finals we broke the World Record with a time of 6:58.56, the first ever relay team to go under the 7 minute barrier, and thus winning my first ever gold medal!

The following summer, World Championships in Rome, Italy, my relay team of Michael Phelps, David Walters, and Ryan Lochte broke our previous world record by .01 and winning the gold medal.  I was also able to swim the prelim relay of the 4×100 Freestyle Relay, where some of you might remember a little suit malfunction while diving off the blocks….