Beginning at age seven, Vivian Rizer ’24 found a passion in swimming, one that she will continue in college. Rizer recently committed to swimming for the next four years at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Rizer has grown up swimming due to her constant exposure to the sport, it runs in her family.
“I started swimming when I was seven, so it has been about 11 years. I started with swim lessons through the parks, mainly swimming for Grosse Pointe Farms in the summer for a while. Since both of my brothers swam, my parents decided that they should just put me into it as well,” Rizer said.
Her decision to swim in college was not one that she had necessarily been planning. She knew she wanted to go to a smaller college, but she did not know she would want to continue her swimming career at one.
“For a while, I was fairly convinced that I would be done swimming after this fall. I’d say one of
the things that made me want to go is that I knew I wanted to go to a smaller college, so I knew swimming could be more of a possibility,” Rizer said.
Beyond offering speech pathology and language, the major Rizer wants to pursue, Calvin’s coaches and current team members drew Rizer in to consider being a part of the team and not simply just attending the college.
“I met with the coaches just to kind of see everything, and the coaches along with the team I got to meet were just incredible,” Rizer said. “I remember I did one clinic with them and they fixed one of my strokes that one of my coaches hadn’t really touched on in a while, and as soon as I got back I immediately started dropping time.”
Rizer can dedicate her success to multiple people. One of the people who has helped to push her is head coach John Fodell.
“A person who has helped me a lot is my current coach, John Fodell. He has done a great job of building people up and motivating them to get to a certain point,” Rizer said.
Besides Fodell, Rizer believes that her dad has helped her in many ways to get her to where she is. He has been a motivator in not only her swimming career but also just in general throughout her life.
“For me, my dad has helped me a lot through this whole process. My dad tried to teach both my brothers and I a very strong hard work ethic,” Rizer said. “I think he has pushed us, which has made us very successful in sports as we have grown (up).”
