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Former Boardman state champ Bailey makes splash with Navy
By CHARLES GROVE
What’s bigger than winning a high school state championship? For Boardman alumnus Ryan Bailey it’s being named captain on next year’s Naval Academy swim team.
The operations research major, who won the 100 butterfly state title in 2013, just capped a successful junior season in which the Midshipmmen went 12-1 in dual meets, including their 25th consecutive win over Army.
The season ended with news that Bailey would be team captain for his senior year.
“I can’t really describe it,” Bailey said. “There’s a lot I’ve accomplished but this is probably the most important thing. It’s very humbling that my teammates trust me, but it scares the crap out of me too.”
It should surprise no one that Navy dominates in the swimming pool over Army, but Bailey is already focusing on keeping that two-decade-and-a-half streak alive.
“I just don’t want to screw it up like if we lose to Army,” Bailey said. “Every year you go into it and you’re nervous about beating them but we just keep fighting them and we pull away. It’s fun to see the mood on the team go from anxiousness to excitement.”
While Bailey said he was always interested in serving in the military, the comfort of being able to keep his focused routine on academics and swimming is what drew him to Annapolis the most.
“In high school I had a schedule I liked to keep and follow every day. I’d go to morning practice, school, afternoon practice, do my homework, go to bed and do the same thing the next day,” Bailey said. “I thought I’d be more comfortable here.”
Terry O’Halloran, Bailey’s swim coach at Boardman High School, said Bailey had his mind set on attending Navy if the program came calling and said because of it, his recruiting process wasn’t nearly as intense as other Division I athletes he’s sent to college.
“I knew he set his goal on going to Navy,” O’Halloran said. “Ryan is a guy who knows what he’s doing two weeks ahead of time, sometimes a year ahead of time. He’s extremely goal-oriented and went to talk to his high school teachers and wanted to know what needed to be done and when it needed to be done by. And once Navy came calling he knocked them dead in the interview.”
Navy obviously isn’t like most other colleges, which Bailey is well aware of, but that doesn’t stop him from putting on his uniform every day for class.
“Classes are mandatory and you have to wear your uniform to class,” Bailey said. “Everyone also lives in one hall. All 4,400 of us. It’s a huge dorm. You also can’t leave during the week, only on the weekends.”
The butterfly specialist hopes to work with submarines after graduation and has an internship lined up with Johns Hopkins University to further study undersea warfare using simulation equipment. All that’s left is an interview on April 12 to blow Hopkins out of the water.
Running computer simulations isn’t all that attracted Bailey to Navy. He was part of a group last year that was able to spend five days in a submarine outside of the Bahamas, gaining hands-on experience.
“We also went to Norfolk for two weeks to work with Marines,” Bailey said. “We camped out with them and they set up a mock town to teach us how to do raids.”
O’Halloran called Bailey being named captain a “significant accomplishment” saying it’s especially impressive to achieve such status at an institution like the Naval Academy.
“The thing that makes it interesting is that Navy only recruits potential leaders. They look for leadership first and swimming ability second,” O’Halloran said. “To be chosen by your peers, who are natural leaders to begin with, it makes you a real leader among leaders.”
Being named captain was likely earned in part to Bailey’s strong performance at this year’s Patriot League championships.
Bailey won consolation finals in the 200 butterfly and the 100 breaststroke, posting personal-best times in each. Bailey missed qualifying for the NCAA meet by 1.5 seconds, but still has a year left to trim that down and compete at the highest level in Division I athletics.
After the swim career and potential graduate school opportunity are completed, Bailey will serve a minimum of five years, but he isn’t opposed to making a career out of it.
“I’ve still got a lot of time to think about it, but I really love what I’m doing here,” Bailey said. “I could see myself making it a career as long as they keep me around.”