At Marist, over 8,000 miles separates sophomore swimmer Kennedy Wheeler from her childhood in Vietnam.
After her mother moved to Asia to work in the footwear industry in 1999, Wheeler was born and raised in Vietnam. She began swimming there at around 5 years old and competing several years later, eventually for her school: International School Ho Chi Minh City.
Those 8,000 miles separate more than just the physical distance between Wheeler’s collegiate home in Poughkeepsie and her childhood home. They separate two distinct experiences with one sport, the first nearly entirely on her own and the second surrounded by a team.
In Vietnam, Wheeler had to build her career by herself. She had to set her goals and figure out how to accomplish them with limited or no assistance.
“Everyone wants to compete in America,” said Wheeler. “That’s everyone’s goal; that’s how they define making it. You pick a sport as a kid, and you go all in to compete internationally.”
There are no club teams in Vietnam. During summers with extended family in Oregon, Wheeler swam with a club team that endorsed her for international competition back in Asia, where meets took her to countries including Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.
But each summer ended with Wheeler returning home to train with her school in Vietnam.
“It’s hard to explain, but it’s not really a team; we [were] just a bunch of people training in the same place,” said Wheeler.
In Vietnam, the structure around her swimming became less predictable. Turmoil within her school’s administration contributed to frequent turnover among its coaches, including some coaches that did not necessarily want the job or have the background for it.
As the coaches around her changed, Wheeler began taking more responsibility for what happened in the pool. By the beginning of her junior year, she still trained with her school every morning, but got back in the water after the school day. She did so with no team around her, just herself and the pool at an apartment complex.
For nearly two years, that became the routine. Morning practice belonged to the school team while the afternoon belonged to Wheeler. By senior year, even that distinction disappeared. Wheeler stopped training with her school team altogether and handled training herself.
“If you want to succeed, you have to do all the training yourself,” Wheeler said. “You have to go the extra mile on your own.”
Wheeler knew where she wanted her work to take her; she wanted to compete in Division I in the United States. But like her training, finding a collegiate home was another solo endeavor.
Having never raced short-course yards, Wheeler didn’t have the official times most American recruits send to coaches. So she worked with what she had: long-course meter times, online conversions and race footage uploaded to YouTube. After years of watching coaches come and go, Wheeler knew the person responding to those emails mattered.
“I’ve learned that if I don’t have a good connection with my coach, it’s hard for them to motivate me, and it’s hard for me to stay motivated,” said Wheeler. “And so my big thing in recruitment was to have a good connection.”
She found that in former Marist head coach Anthony Randall. Immediately, Wheeler felt that Randall wanted to know more about her than the numbers she could put on a recruiting sheet. She paid attention to how he interacted with the swimmers already at Marist and noticed a coach willing to evaluate himself, something that still surprises her.
“He would say, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t do enough today,’ or ‘I need to be better at this or that’ in coaching to help us do the best we could,” said Wheeler.
Wheeler had considered staying closer to family on the West Coast, but she also loved the idea of New York. After her unofficial visit to Poughkeepsie, Wheeler had no hesitation in choosing Marist. So, after a life in Vietnam, Wheeler moved to the United States in 2025.
Almost immediately, the sport she had been around since she was five began to feel different. The difference didn’t lie in the actual actions of the sport she knew so well, but rather in what happened outside of the water. One of Wheeler’s first introductions came at Marist’s Red and White meet—the intrasquad meet divided one roster into two teams.
Wheeler had never experienced this; the two sides rallied around their swimmers. Back home, she had known what it meant to wear the same school name as the people around her. She knew what it meant to practice together. She knew what it meant to win. This, though, was different.
“It really was contributing to Marist and contributing as a teammate, not only as a competitor,” said Wheeler.
At Marist, an individual performance could belong to more than just the person who swam it. As the season continued, Wheeler saw that extend beyond points on a scoreboard.
“I truly have never been a part of such a positive environment,” said Wheeler. “No matter who you looked to at that meet, they really all just wanted the best for each other. I had never seen something like it before. Everyone’s win was one for the team.”
That feeling only grew as Wheeler branched into the unfamiliar territory of relays, watching teammates carry not just a leg of a race, but the pressure on each other’s shoulders. As the season moved toward the MAAC Championships, something began happening to the team as a whole: they started believing.
“We came in having the expectation that, like, we’ll do okay, we’ll do good,” said Wheeler. Then January came. “All of a sudden we’re leading the sessions, and everyone’s like, ‘God, this is crazy. If we all come together, we can get the points to do this.’”
The MAAC Championships were about a month away and capped a season filled with firsts. Individually, Wheeler raced to gold in the 100-yard freestyle and bronze in the 50-yard freestyle, something she gives a bit of credit to the lack of expectations that came with so many unknowns. Other swimmers could finish a race and compare the number against years of short-course performances.
Wheeler couldn’t; she entered the season without a single official time in yards.
“I think because I didn’t know where to compare myself to, I just had no pressure going into each race,” said Wheeler. “I was just there to have fun at that point.”
She couldn’t immediately categorize every swim as good or bad—for once, not knowing worked in her favor. By the end of the meet, Wheeler had already helped Marist to bronze in the 200-yard freestyle relay and 400-yard medley relay, but one event remained: the 400-yard freestyle relay.
Based on the standings entering the final race, Marist needed to win the 400-yard freestyle relay to capture the title. All of her life, swimming had been a lone sport from practice to competition, but in her first championship season, the final result rested equally on everyone’s shoulders.
Marist finished third, but that race still served as an encapsulation of what Wheeler’s move stateside has meant.
“There was a lot of pressure on that race, and everyone did really well,” said Wheeler. “It wasn’t just about getting a medal; it was about making each other proud.”
Just as she began to feel comfortable and truly part of a team, Wheeler faced more uncertainty.
At the end of the season, Randall left Marist to become the head swim coach and aquatics director at Providence College, a move that allowed him to return home to his family. His departure wasn’t the only one; Wheeler learned she would also enter the new year with a new athletic trainer and strength and conditioning coach.
Despite the success of her first year, worry crept in for Wheeler. Randall wasn’t simply another coach leaving; she had chosen Marist partly because the connection and stability she found with him were so different from what she had known in Vietnam.
“I was really nervous it would be a bad coach,” said Wheeler.
Instinct kicked in, and Wheeler subconsciously made a plan for what felt like the inevitable in her swimming career. Wheeler knew change, she had figured this out before. As the familiar process of planning her next step alone took over, she decided to remain open-minded about transferring, if need be.
But a new feeling settled in as well—she couldn’t quite shake one thought.
“If I transferred, I’d lose the team. I’d lose all of them.”
Wheeler held onto the sliver of hope that hesitation presented. As her sophomore season began and the coaches changed, the turmoil she feared never presented itself. Every athlete on the roster dealt with the same new coach, wondering what to expect at practices and in the new season.
“Having the entire team not know this coach, it kind of gave me like, ‘Okay, I’m not alone,’” said Wheeler. “We’re all in this together. We’re all figuring out how this next season will play out.”
For once, even uncertainty was something Wheeler could share. Her fears quickly eased, especially after meeting new head coach Billy Gordon and learning about his emphasis on team culture.
“It’s only the beginning, but the care he has for the team culture is amazing,” said Wheeler. “Transferring to me is insane. I could never even consider that.”
The Red Foxes enter the new season with the confidence it took them until January to find last year. Wheeler is especially excited about a sprint group strengthened by two newcomers. She still has individual races ahead of her, but in terms of which event she is most looking forward to? There is no doubt.
“The 400-free relay.”
The last event of her first collegiate season, where four individual swims became one result. Each stroke is the same as it was alone in the apartment complex pool in Vietnam, but the second her head breaks through the water, her world of swimming is a completely new one.
And this time, there’s a team waiting for her.
Edited by August Liberman & Max Rosen
Graphic by Jaylen Rizzo
Photo from Marist Athletics
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