Swimming and Diving: Cichowska finds success in transition to Pitt

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Kinga Cichowska arrived on Pitt’s campus last fall, ready to begin her collegiate swimming career, but while the freshman traveled nearly 5,000 miles away from her hometown of Wroclaw, Poland to compete for Pitt, she isn’t the first Polish swimmer to become a Panther.

Head coach Chuck Knoles had already recruited, signed, nurtured and graduated three recent Polish swimmers:  Dawid Goszczycki, who graduated in 2012; Adam Maczewski and Joanna Budzis, who graduated in 2013; and Andrzej Dubiel, who was named Team MVP in 2010 as a senior.

Knoles and his staff’s experience with Polish swimmers, not to mention their overall pleasant demeanor, played a deciding role in Cichowska’s decision to join the program.  

“They have really nice, friendly coaches and some people from my country [at Pitt], so it’s always very helpful to have someone who can speak in Polish when you’re so far from home,” she said.

Dubiel and his father, who Cichowska described to be a Polish “swimming official,” played a large role in introducing her to Pitt and its campus.

“I didn’t know [Andrzej] personally, but I know his dad very well,” Cichowska said. Dubiel’s hometown, Warsaw, is three hours from Wroclaw, where Cichowska was raised. “[The father] mentioned that it was fun [at Pitt] and [his son] was very happy with it.” 

Divergent histories

Although familiar names and faces were helpful, the transition to the United States still required Cichowska to make adjustments.

By the late 18th century, most of the world had adopted the metric system of measurement while the United States stuck with a system of so-called “customary units,” forming an international measurement discrepancy.

Several decades later, Europeans began to marvel over the newly popularized sport of competitive swimming. The phenomenon soon spread overseas to the United States, but recreation centers and grade schools decided that the Olympic-standard 50-meter pools were too expensive to build and maintain, so cheaper and smaller 25-yard pools began to emerge.

They’ve only gained popularity since, making it a difficult transition for foreign swimmers who come to U.S. colleges on swimming scholarships because swimming in smaller pools calls for kicking off the wall mid-swim and changing directions to complete lengths, a technique known simply as “turning.”

When Cichowska arrived in the United States, she was immediately stunned by two abnormal American features: one was the change in culture, and the other was the change in pools, where Cichowska played victim to a brutal amount of “turning” repetitions during her first season as a Panther.

“I need to focus on it and work on it all the time — whenever I’m tired, whenever we race, whenever we do drills,” Cichowska said. “Then I can drop my time, so it’s really worth it.”

It will be worth it, but hard work will do more than just benefit Cichowska in her immediate collegiate future. 

Before arriving at Pitt, the now-19-year-old Cichowska gained recognition by becoming the Polish National Champion in the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke events at Poland’s 2012 Summer National Championships, an event she’d competed in since age 14.

She also snagged gold medals in the 2012 Winter National Championships’ same events, and in 2010, she finished ninth at the European Junior Championships in the 200-meter breaststroke and 10th in the 100-meter breaststroke.

And after the accolades came dozens of scholarship offers from American universities, including Pitt.

“There was quite a bit of competition to get her at Pitt as opposed to quite a few universities,” Knoles said.

Before seriously narrowing down her college choices, though, Cichowska crossed off schools that were in Poland, where her options only included a short list of universities, and on the American West Coast, where the lengthy plane ride from Poland was much too daunting for Cichowska and her family to imagine.

Part of the team

After the first round of cuts, her list consisted of some of the best NCAA Division I swimming schools on the East Coast, most of which are in the ACC and SEC. But one university in particular — one with a recent history of penning the names of Polish swimmers to record books — caught her eye: Pitt.

Knoles was happy to add the national champion, and things only got better after Cichowska signed and arrived on campus. 

At the 2013 AT&T Winter National Championships, Cichowska swam the 200-meter breaststroke in 2:12.02, good for seventh place in the ACC on the season, and in the 100-meter breaststroke, she placed 15th in the ACC with a time of 1:01.61.

Both times broke Pitt school records.

At the same event, the combination of Blair Wegescheide, Veronica Lee, Cichowska and Dani des Tombe clocked in at 3:39.68 in the 400-meter medley relay, which consists of four individual legs: backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle.

Taking hold of the breaststroke, Cichowska helped the team break yet another school record, and des Tombe credited Cichowska’s determination for the accomplishment.

“Kinga is really positive and has a ‘go-get-it’ attitude,” des Tombe said of her partner, though Cichowska’s personal standards for the word teammate differ from anyone else on the team. 

In fact, she’s still growing accustomed to the word team.

“In the States, they consider swimming a team sport,” Cichowska said. “And I’ve never done this before. In Poland, they consider everything individual, so the person on the team [here] is very important.”

“I feel very connected with the team, and the team keeps me going,” she added. “When I have a sickness, when I feel bad, when I have an injury or something, I need to return for the team. I think this is why American swimming is so strong because you want to trade individual sport for the team sport.”

Adversity

But shortly after the Winter National Championships, Cichowska injured her knee, the same one that she’d experienced problems with throughout high school, and was unable to participate in kicking exercises for more than a month.

“Had it not been for that, my feelings are that she probably would have made the NCAA championships this year,” Knoles said.

Cichowska will have three more seasons to reach such a goal, but according to Knoles, another goal occupies her expectations.

Knoles says Pitt is just a stepping stone for Cichowska, who, if she stays healthy and continues to show improvement on turns, could represent Poland in future Olympic games.

He believes she has a “realistic shot” at making the team. 

Cichowska made an effort at the 2012 Olympics in London, but fell short. She hopes to qualify for the team in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and achieve what she calls her biggest dream: swimming for her country. 

“I’m already in the States, so I think I did a really good thing with my swimming that I was able to move to the States and start at a really good university,” she said. “This is a huge advantage that swimming gave me, and now I think that I can go further and become an Olympian.”