Going for gold: TCU athletes head to Paris to compete in 2024 Summer Olympics

For TCU women’s basketball player Hailey Van Lith, playing in the Olympics was never an impossible dream.

“I always saw myself as an Olympian. I would look up and I would watch Diana (Taurasi) and Sue (Bird) play, and I saw myself there,” Van Lith said during a recent press conference inside TCU’s arena. “I just had to be patient.”

The five-time International Basketball Federation gold medalist will take the court for Team USA in the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, with the opening ceremony this Friday. It’s a “surreal moment” made real by the support of her family and coaches, Van Lith said.

She’s the only collegiate athlete to make any of the USA basketball teams, playing for the women’s 3×3 basketball team. But she’s not the only Horned Frog who will take the world stage.

Alberto Silva Fernandez

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Fort Worth Report

Five other current TCU student athletes and four alumni qualified for the international competition, which kicks off July 26 and concludes Aug. 11. They’ll compete in basketball, tennis, rifle, beach volleyball and swimming.

The university has built up athletics as one of the four pillars of its strategic plan. The record number of current and former TCU athletes in this summer’s games cements TCU’s growing reputation for athletic prominence.

“The hard work and commitment it takes to compete at the Olympic level is uncommon and extraordinary,” said Jeremiah Donati, TCU’s director of intercollegiate athletics. “To see these young men and women headed for this world stage to live out their dreams is truly awesome.”

For Van Lith, the 3×3 competition will require adjusting from the traditional 5×5 games she has played during stints at Louisiana State University, the University of Louisville and now TCU. The format is more physically taxing, more visible and gets the lungs burning, she said.

“I need to be in the best shape of my life,” said Van Lith. “The main focus is conditioning. At my position, I’m the smallest guard that we have. I’m guarding all the very small European, quick, athletic guards who are quick as lightning.”

To prepare her for Paris, TCU women’s basketball head coach Mark Campbell has played one-on-one with Van Lith every day. In the pool, TCU swimming and diving head coach James Winchester has been training TCU athlete Jadon Wuilliez, who will be competing in the men’s 100-meter breaststroke for the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, his home country. The training regimen for him: swimming, some lifting and swimming, repeat.

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TCU

“I’ve been stuck on 1 minute and 2 seconds for the 500-meter breaststroke for five years. I’ve been dropping milliseconds every time,” Wuilliez said in a mid-July phone interview from just outside of Paris, where he has been training. “Getting under 1:02 would be fantastic.”

Wuilliez, who jokingly says he can swim better than he can walk, grew up in Antigua, which features hundreds of beaches in a small space. While he’s been swimming since age 4, Wuilliez said he has a tendency to overthink before a race. Once in the pool, he’ll stick to Winchester’s advice.

“You’ve done enough strokes your whole life. You’ve done enough turns. You’ve done enough technique work to where you don’t need to think about it,” said Wuilliez, a mechanical engineering student. “To do it well, just switch your brain off and execute what your body knows how to do.”

It’s wisdom that Wuilliez will carry with him in and out of the water. In Paris, he wants to relish in the moment of competing in the international games and representing his home country. It’s been his dream to put his name, and his nation, on the map.

Georgie London is a reporting fellow for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at georgie.london@fortworthreport.org.

Shomial Ahmad is a higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report, in partnership with Open Campus. Contact her at shomial.ahmad@fortworthreport.org.

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This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.