Olivia Wallace doesn’t miss a moment. The Notre Dame Academy grad on her way to MIT can’t afford to. Not with swimming for the Cincinnati Marlins six days a week with three days of double practices and arrival at 5:30 a.m. if there’s weightlifting – which there is five days a week – and 6:30 a.m. when there’s not.
And with the double workouts Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, there’s just enough time to go home, Olivia says, and then back to the pool at Cincinnati St. Xavier in Finneytown. Which is a bit of a haul from the Wallace home in Union.
Olivia is used to it now. “I’ve been doing it since my sophomore year,” says the Top 10-ranked Kentucky swimmer who helped Notre Dame to another state runner-up spot in this year’s state championships with her performance in the 100 and 200 freestyle events.
“I’ll come home and sleep,” she says . . . and maybe “play my violin.” Yep, Olivia does that as well, taking lessons at the Cincinnati Conservatory when she can. “I really enjoy it.”
But there’s another part of Olivia’s daily life that’s helped her decide on her career path and college choice.
“I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in the first grade,” she says. “I don’t know anything else.” When she’s swimming, Olivia adjusts the typical advice for diabetics preparing to exercise to up their carbs. “I have to do quite a bit more — from 15 grams to 30 or 40—and I turn off my (insulin) pump to manual and I’m good to go.”
Olivia has a model there – “Gary Hall Jr.,” she notes, the legendary third-generation Cincinnati Marlin 10-time swimming medalist – five golds — in three Olympics from 1996 to 2004 – Atlanta, Sydney and Athens – who also overcame Type 1 diabetes.
As for her college choice, MIT was pretty much the way to go after researching all the possibilities to help her get to her dual goals. “I wanted to be an endocrinologist,” Olivia says, after the care she’s gotten from her own doctor, also an endocrinologist with type 1 diabetes. “I’d really like to continue that relationship.”
But she’d also like to do research, something she’s been able to do already on a couple of projects. And when she visited MIT, she learned of the combined MD/Ph. D programs that a career path like that would require. Luckily, MIT – and Harvard, also in Boston – are two of the schools that offer that program.
So MIT it was, even though the Massachusetts’ school was one of the most selective in America, with a 4.5 percent acceptance rate, just behind the top six — Caltech, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Yale and Princeton. And it’s not exactly been a destination school for Northern Kentuckians.
“It was just the best fit for me,” Olivia says after checking out the likes of Caltech, Johns Hopkins and Notre Dame. She wanted a place where she could get to her end career goals and still swim.
“I really wanted to continue that,” she says of a sport where the best thing for her has been the chance to be a part of a team. “It’s the friends and relationships you make. That’s where the fun is. You wouldn’t do it unless it’s fun.”
MIT “highly encourages it,” Olivia says of continuing her swimming career. “They like to challenge the stereotype,” of the nerd/scholar/scientist. “Kind of like nerd-plus,” Olivia says with a laugh.
“They won their conference last year,” the MIT swimmers did, although Olivia notes “they don’t practice as much, just from 5 to 7 every day.”
Which leaves plenty of time for Olivia to practice what she preached to herself about going to MIT. “I don’t know where to start,” she says, “there are just so many opportunities available to get involved in – too many is the complaint.”
And maybe the reverse of what high school swimmer Olivia has experienced thus far in her life. “At MIT, I’m not going to have to fight to be part of those kinds of opportunities,” she says, and that’s a good problem to have.”
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X @dweber3440.