by Molly Clark
LSU Sports Information
Take your mark. Go!
To most, these words mark the beginning of a race. To others, like Julius Gloeckner, these words will mark the beginning of a new season of victories and records.
Going into his senior year, Gloeckner owns more individual records than any other men’s swimmer in program history. He captured all three of his marks ? the 200- and 400-yard individual medleys and the 200-yard butterfly ? with a sensational effort at the 2007 NCAA Championships during his sophomore year. His performance earned him his second and third All-America honors in just two seasons.
Despite another fantastic season in his junior campaign, the three-time All-American wasn’t able to repeat his record-breaking success in 2007-08. However, Gloeckner trained vigorously during the summer to get back to the NCAAs this season and returned to Minneapolis, Minn., the site of the 2007 NCAA Championships, to compete at the 2008 U.S. Open, which featured some of the top collegiate swimmers in the country last summer.
“The U.S. Open was the most important meet of my summer,” Gloeckner said. “It was a great experience because it was a really fast meet.”
Beyond his tremendous accomplishments as a collegiate athlete, the senior swimmer has been a model of excellence outside the pool, receiving SEC Academic Honor Roll recognition in all three of previous seasons. He also leads by example for his Tiger teammates.
“He brings that confidence to the pool so that the other swimmers know when he comes up to the block, he’s going to go fast,” LSU head coach Adam Schmitt said. “It brings a peace to the team that if Julius is in the meet, then we’re OK.”
The Freiburg, Germany native was recruited by Schmitt for the 2005-2006 season as part of his first full recruiting class at LSU. The Tigers’ coach was hired to take over LSU swimming and diving in 2004, and his goal was to rebuild the program and recruit new, international talent.
“Coming into the program, we had to really rebuild and scour the planet for athletes who were willing to come and commit themselves to LSU and what we were trying to do,” Schmitt said.
“We contacted Julius primarily via email and through long-distance phone conversations to convince him that LSU was where he needed to be to become the athlete is he today.”
LSU was the obvious choice for Gloeckner.
“I knew I wanted to go overseas to America for college,” Gloeckner said. “I just looked around at different schools and felt most comfortable with the contacts at LSU.”
Gloeckner is considered the first German in the Schmitt era to really make a major impact on the program, and since then, he’s has been instrumental in convincing some of his other countrymen to join him at LSU.
“For people who didn’t know about LSU like Martin Jungfleisch, Simon Diefenthal and Steffen Voelkel, it was more attractive for them to come here because LSU has native German speakers,” Gloeckner added. “Christoph Lubenau and Hannes Heyl, we were all friends before college, so it allowed us to able to swim together.”
Lubenau and Heyl have continued the German success within the program Gloeckner has created. Last season, both became two-time All-Americans at the 2008 NCAA Championships and each currently ranks as the fastest and second-fastest 100-fly swimmers, respectively, in school history. With the continuing influx of talent, both American and international, into the program, Schmitt believes Gloeckner could be in for his best collegiate season.
“Over the years, we’ve surrounded him with more and more quality athletes,” Schmitt said. “I think this could be Julius’ best year of all his years.”