Indiana University Athletics
Leila Vaziri - Not Just Potential Anymore
9/22/2006 12:00:00 AM | Women's Swimming and Diving
Sept. 22, 2006
For as long as she can remember, Indiana swimmer Leila Vaziri was the girl with "all that potential." She had been successful throughout the years, sure, but there was still more to be done, and everyone sensed it, even her. Even after two Big Ten titles and 12 All-America honors, there was the nagging feeling that Vaziri was still only scratching the surface of what she was capable of doing.
"So many people my whole swimming career have said that I was always somebody with a lot of potential," Vaziri said. "And that's what I always was. Coaches always said to me, and my teammates, I had so much potential. That's a great thing, but then at the same time, when you're 21 and you have potential, when is it going to be not potential, but you're actually at that level where you're supposed to be?"
Pretty soon, it seems.
A senior for the Hoosiers this season, the unassuming Vaziri put the world on notice during the summer. A relative unknown - actually, a complete unknown - on the national scene at the start of the long course season, the Coral Springs, Fla., native turned heads throughout the swimming world when she beat Olympic gold medalist and world-record holder Natalie Coughlin in the 100-meter backstroke at the Eric Namesnik Grand Prix in Ann Arbor, Mich., on May 20.
Must have been a fluke, right? Not so much. Vaziri took down another Olympian at the Charlotte UltraSwim in Charlotte, N.C., on June 10, this time beating Katie Hoff in the 100 back.
Suddenly, all that potential was starting to be realized. If Vaziri was knocking on the door to reaching her potential early in the summer, in August, she decided just to kick it in.
It was on Aug. 2 that Vaziri's life changed. That was when she turned in a time of 1:01.69 to win the 100 back at the ConocoPhillips National Championships. Six months after failing to even defend her Big Ten title in the event, Vaziri walked out of the William Woollett Jr. Aquatic Center in Irvine, Calif., with a national title in hand.
"USA Swimming wanted to know who was I, where was I from, why had I not swum so fast before, and then there was drug testing," Vaziri said. "So it was a little bit at first kind of crazy."
Vaziri didn't enter the championship meet thinking she would win a national title. In fact, it wasn't even until the day of her swim that she even considered the possibility of winning. But when Coughlin decided not to swim the event, instead focusing on another, Vaziri knew the title was up for grabs.
"The day of my race at nationals, I had just the mentality that I want to make a national team," Vaziri said. "A national team. I didn't know about the national, the `A' team, but I wanted to make one, because they were choosing several. And the day of my 100 backstroke, Natalie had scratched to focus on another event, and so when she did that, that was the morning that (Indiana head coach) Ray (Looze) and I said okay, I can win this event now, because the other few of us were pretty close. There was nobody who was way out there like Natalie was."
With her performance at the National Championships, Vaziri did indeed earn a spot on the national team and the right to compete for the U.S. at the Pan Pacific Championships in Victoria, B.C., in late August. She credits her wins over Coughlin and Hoff earlier in the summer for her win at Nationals.
"The races are so short, and you have to have everything on - the start, turn, everything," Vaziri said. "So for me, I've always had a little bit of difficulty just having that confidence going into races, so that definitely helped, and just led up to my swims at Nationals."
With a spot on the U.S. World Championship team on the line at the Pan Pacs, Vaziri knew all she had to do was maintain one of the top two American times in the 100 back to get her name on the American roster. Her title-winning time was tops in the nation so far, but Coughlin had yet to swim the event at a qualifying meet.
But with Coughlin competing at Pan Pacs and the rest of the field very strong, Vaziri's World Championship dreams hit a snag in the Aug. 18 preliminaries. Vaziri turned in a respectable time of 1:01.82 in the prelims, good for the fifth-best time overall and the third-best American time, but Coughlin blew away the field and compatriot Lauren English finished fourth overall in 1:01.68 - a mere hundredth of a second ahead of Vaziri's best time. Making matters worse was the fact that Pan Pac rules allow only two people per country in each final, meaning that if Vaziri were going to get back into the top two, she was going to have to do it from the slower consolation final.
Now on the outside looking in for a chance at the World Championships, Vaziri knew she had to go faster in the final to leapfrog English to earn her spot. Normally a slow starter who comes on strong at the finish of a race, Vaziri, along with her coaches, made a critical tactical decision before the final. Vaziri elected to go all-out from the get-go, instead of hanging with the pack and risking not having someone push her toward the end.
The gamble paid off, as Vaziri won her final in 1:01.53. That time bettered English's from the morning session, virtually assuring that Vaziri would again be representing USA Swimming at the FINA World Championships in Melbourne, Australia, in March of 2007. That became official on Sept. 1, when USA Swimming announced its roster.
Despite the pressure of the situation, Vaziri, while nervous, was also confident in her abilities.
"I knew that I could swim faster, and even now I know that I can swim faster than the time I went at Pan Pacs, because my race at Nationals wasn't perfect," Vaziri said. "It wasn't like I touched the wall and I was like `Whew, that's it, I'm going to retire.' So I felt that I still had room for improvement, and with the USA Swimming cap and suit on, I felt like if they wanted me to break the world record, I could have. There was so much excitement and adrenaline that I felt incredibly nervous, but I felt like I could do better."
With the long course season behind her for the moment, Vaziri will turn her sights toward her final collegiate season. Back on campus, full of resolve and brimming with confidence from her phenomenal summer, Vaziri is hungry to regain the 100-yard backstroke Big Ten title she lost last season. And after that, she's taking aim at winning Indiana's first NCAA swimming title.
"I think so far I've had some of the best practices I've ever had, and I think it's because I realized you have to have fun to do well," she said. "You have to enjoy it. If you're somebody who is just working toward a goal, and pounding it with no love in it, no joy in it, I don't think you can have success, even if you're doing the best training, if that says anything. And by being my senior year, I'm just totally enjoying being a college athlete. I've loved it so far, and I am emotional about it being my last year and my last Big Tens and my last NCAAs and everything."
Even if Vaziri comes up short of her goals, the good she's done for the Indiana program during the summer is immeasurable.
"It's elevated us to another level," Looze said. "You can have all the best facilities and academics and coaching staff, but you've got to win at one point. In our sport, you can do that individually and then comprehensively as a team, and I think her individual win and success will lead to that comprehensive success very shortly."
Regardless of how her senior season goes for the Hoosiers, Vaziri seems to have finally shed that label of just having potential. Now she's living up to it.
"She's doing it," Looze said. "It doesn't really matter when you begin to do it, it just matters that you do it. Some people, their window is smaller than others. Some people do it over the course of a long time. Others get hot and do it in a shorter period of time. She's taken that second route."
Winning a national championship has a funny way of changing perceptions. And it's given Vaziri the validation she needed to prove that she was more than just someone with promise.
"I don't know if relief is the word, but I don't know," Vaziri said. "Maybe relief. I was really proud. Finally, I felt like I had done something significant - not just a swimmer with potential."
