The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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118 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY MATT CARTER S wimmer Andreas Vazaios and NC State proved to be a perfect match. His journey to Raleigh began when a 3-year-old in Greece en- vied his older sister while watching her swim. His mother had little issue with An- dreas taking it up, too, if that's what he wanted. She had been told by their pedia- trician that swimming was good for their children's physical development. Vazaios was not an instant success, but that did not matter. He simply loved swim- ming. When his sister gave it up, he kept going. Some may wonder if the Olympics in Athens in 2004, when Vazaios was 10 years old, may have driven him to become an elite swimmer, but that was not the case either. He did attend swimming events in Ath- ens, but he also went to basketball games and gymnastics events. "I never felt that pressure, and I think that's why it's something that I still love," Vazaios noted. "I learned to love swimming because it's something good for me. "It became a part of my life, that it's hard not to see having that." Within a short time, Vazaios did start to become a sensation in the sport. He won his first medal in a backstroke race when he was 11. He swam the race because his club team simply didn't have another backstroke swimmer on the team. After changing swim clubs, Vazaios took off. He started setting national records at age 14 (the first came in the 200 freestyle) and made the junior national team. In 2016, Vazaios helped the Greek team win the gold medal at the European Champion- ships in the 200-meter medley relay. Later that year, he competed in London in the Summer Olympics in the 200 individual medley, where he made it to the semifinals and placed 11th (just missing the eight- swimmer finals). That same year, Vazaios made a fate- ful decision to look into swimming at an American college. His freshman year at a Greek university was challenging. Since athletics and school are separate in Greece, Vazaios' class schedule and club swim- ming practices were often overlapping, and psychology is another passion of his. In America, he would be able to combine his swimming and studies in a university setting. "I went online through the rankings for NCAA," Vazaios recalled. "I looked at the top 10, and from that I started to narrow down the list to which university had a good psychology program, which univer- sity had a big team or small team, why they are having successes, what is the develop- ment of their athletes. "It took me a week to go through all the stuff I wanted to see and to decide." Fortunately for NC State, the burgeon- ing program caught Vazaios' eye. Just as fortunate, assistant coach Bobby Guntoro was checking his email early one morning and quickly responded to an inquiry from Vazaios. "The first thing I saw was the time they sent [5 a.m.]," Vazaios remembered. It did not take long for Vazaios to decide he wanted to come to NC State, but getting there was not easy. He was an international student, and the transferring of classes was tricky. NC State told him he had two op- tions: pass a bunch of new classes and fill the gap that was there for him to be eligible or stick to what he had in Greece. "It was a big shock," Vazaios admitted. "I thought I don't have any reason not to. I really want to come. At that point I had already come for my recruiting trip. "Just watching how the coaches were talking to each swimmer I could see how passionate they were and I could feel some- MALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR ANDREAS VAZAIOS WOLFPACKER FOR LIFE Greek Import Andreas Vazaios Thrived At NC State Vazaios repeated as national champion in the 200 butterfly and was named the ACC Men's Scholar Athlete of the Year. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS