It was only a matter of days after they had helped their team win its first NCAA Championship that Darian Townsend and Albert Subirats left the United States to go back to their respective countries. After all, it was time to start training for the Olympic qualifiers.

Townsend, a native of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and Subirats, a native of Valencia, Venezuela spent the last two and four years, respectively, helping the Arizona Wildcats men’s swimming team achieve elite status in the world of NCAA swimming. Now there’s nothing left to prove. The two carried the Wildcats to a national championship last weekend in Seattle, the first ever for the swimming team and the last UA men’s team to win since the 1997 basketball program.

The men's team features a bit of an international flair. Of the team’s 25 members, seven of them (28 percent) hail from foreign countries. Townsend and Subirats were both Olympians in 2004 (Townsend a gold medalist) for other countries. The two were the leaders of the Wildcats’ 13 NCAA team representatives.

Even though the two were on Olympic teams in 2004, before they came to Tucson, neither of them had experienced the feeling of an actual swim team.

“In South Africa, there’s no camaraderie like we have here at U of A,” Townsend said last week from Washington, D.C. while waiting for a flight to South Africa. “It took me a couple years to get used to that whole team mentality here.

“Being from out of the country, I liked it a lot. I had teammates from all over the world. If you take swimming away from it, it’s good for everybody because they get exposure to all these other countries and their cultures and the way they think.”

Townsend will be taking the next 10 days off school to train in Durbin in the 200-meter freestyle, aiming to achieve one of the top two times in the country to qualify for the Olympic trials and will then look at potential swimming sponsorships. He totaled four NCAA Championship relays in his four-year college career.

Subirats, who spent six months living in Florida learning the English language before he came to Tucson, is grateful not just for the time he spent at the university, but for the relationships he formed as a foreigner.

“When you compete for your country (in the Olympics) its kind of an individual effort,” Subirats said. “When you’re out there for Arizona, it’s a total team effort. It’s not every day that you get to share a relay with an Olympic gold medalist Darian Townsend.”
Subirats left over the weekend to start preparing for the swim world championships in Manchester, England and will spend the summer training for the Olympics and then will graduate the UA in December. Subirats won five NCAA relay titles, and even has an NCAA individual record.

“Albert was our emotional leader and certainly our athletic leader,” said UA swim coach Frank Busch. “He’s just a great person. He showed tremendous growth in the four years he was here. Darian came to the UA very quiet and very much of an introvert, but left as an extrovert and definitely a team leader.

“Just watching both of them grow was very, very rewarding and their accomplishments speak for themselves.”

Joining the list of foreigners on the National Champion swim roster are South African sophomore Jean Basson, English freshman Robert Iddiols, Brazilian junior Nicolas Nilo, and Canadian sophomores Joel Greenshields and Jake Tapp.

Busch said he didn’t know whether it was common for college teams to have so many international athletes, but added that most of the students recruit the school, making his job as head coach a little easier.

“Some coaches don’t want any kids from other countries,” Busch said. “To me, people are people, wherever they’re from. Some of these kids come from incredible, limited backgrounds and are so appreciative of the opportunity that is given to them.

“I’m just blessed to have a lot of wonderful people. It doesn’t matter where they come from, because once they’re here, they’re here for the Wildcats, and they’re treated no different than anybody else.”