Marshel plan

It started, simply, as part of Marshel Renz’s desire to find his own sport. Three older brothers had before him, excelling

locally in everything from baseball to gymnastics, and Renz had tried basketball, baseball and soccer, but nothing appealed to him.

When an aunt mentioned to a 12-year-old Renz that he had the broad shoulders and skinny waist of a swimmer, it was a humble, late beginning in the sport.

Also quite a long ways from Auburn, Ala.

That’s where Renz’s swimming career will take him next, as the University senior signed with Auburn, the four-time defending NCAA champions, last week.

So the question would center around how the premier collegiate men’s swimming program looked 2,500 miles away and found a kid swimming in an area not typically known for its backstroke.

Although after analyzing how far he’s come in such a short time, the question is how they couldn’t.

For Renz, the realization that he wanted to compete collegiately came around his freshman year of high school.

“One of the main things was I had to find a reason to go to college and help pay for it,” Renz said. “Being athletically able to get an athletic scholarship, that’s what really made me buckle down and try as hard as I could.”

As he began to compete and do well nationally, colleges began paying attention.

Schools like USC, Purdue, Indiana and Arizona State and the University of Washington, which according to Renz, offered him an 80 percent scholarship, which was more than Auburn offered.

That’s impressive considering colleges are hamstrung by a smaller amount of scholarships than they have swimmers, but the chance to compete at the highest level couldn’t be passed up.

“It’s a partial scholarship, but it’s the best school in the nation,” he said of Auburn.

At first, his coach with the Spokane Area Swim Team, Todd Marsh, was hesitant.

After speaking with Auburn’s head coach, David Marsh (no relation), he saw that Renz wasn’t passing up an opportunity to swim at other colleges to sit and watch at the best.

“They’ve won four national championships in a row and had a number of Olympians,” Todd Marsh said. “Even this year, you can only qualify 18 for the national championship and they had four who qualified but couldn’t go, and most schools can’t qualify four.

“He assured me that he’d swim at all dual meets and swim at the conference meet. It should be tough for him to make the NCAAs, but he’ll be close.”

Renz has a couple things going for him as he heads south.

First, his specialty is the 400 individual medley, which incorporates all four strokes. It’s also at a medium distance, making Renz quite versatile.

Also, he’s only been swimming for six years while most dedicated swimmers started early in grade school, so he has a high ceiling.

“They’re expecting me to grow,” Renz said. “There’s a lot of high expectations. I’ve progressed a lot and since I’ve come a long way in such a short time, it opened their eyes a little bit.”

For example, take this spring’s senior nationals, the first time Renz had competed on such a large stage.

The plan was to make the top 24, just swimming well enough to reach the finals, but Renz qualified for the “A” final with the sixth-fastest time in the preliminary heat. He ended up finishing seventh in the finals.

“That’s a huge step up for having it be my first senior nationals,” Renz said.

His coach agreed.

“Almost all the kids going there can be dang talented,” Marsh said. “But there’s the mental side of going from regional to national, even though they might have the time capable of getting them there. And he went and dropped four seconds.”

But that’s just part of Renz’s attitude – that as high as Auburn and anyone else’s expectations may be – his are higher.

“They only allow 18 to go to the NCAA tournament, so (my) freshman year I want to make that team and go score points,” he said.

“By my junior or senior year, I expect to be a national champion.”