The first bribe Will Modglin ever accepted was a candy bar. He had spent his infancy crawling around a pool deck at a local club in Zionsville, Indiana, while his parents coached and his older brothers swam lengths. But once he began jumping into the pool himself, he encountered a fundamental problem.
“I didn’t like the water at all,” he says. “I just did it because my brothers did it.”
Modglin’s parents, Chris and Michele – who had themselves met on a pool deck before getting into coaching – could see that their youngest son had the build to be an elite swimmer. There’s a story about him that his parents like to tell, which is that as soon as he emerged from his mother’s womb, one of the doctors exclaimed, This kid has a six-pack already! When he was a toddler, he already had the natural kick of a backstroke prodigy.
Modglin’s parents didn’t want to waste that potential. And so before his first race, when a reluctant Modglin was about four or five years old, his parents made a deal with him: Swim today, and we’ll give you a Hershey bar. That kept Modglin going for a while, as did the presence of his brothers Sanders and Coleman, who would become college swimmers. Still, he didn’t like swimming much. He agreed to stay in a summer league, mostly because his parents would have had to find a way to pay for a babysitter if he didn’t do it. It was more an obligation than a passion.
Modglin learned at a young age that bribes were king, and candy was currency. [Courtesy photos]
And then one day, he came across a second enticement that led him to keep going. “I remember the exact meet,” he says. “We were at Carmel High School to see my brothers swim. And I see all these swimmers on the pool deck wearing these really cool parkas.”
I want one of those, Modglin told his parents.
You swim, his parents told him, and you can get a parka.
Modglin told himself he’d swim for a season, get his parka, and then go back to playing the sports he liked – sports that took place on dry land, like soccer and basketball. But over time, Modglin says, swimming became a part of his life. He made good friends among the swimmers in his age group, so that practice seemed less and less like drudgery and actually became fun. And he got better and better, to the point that he couldn’t ignore his natural gifts.
More than a decade later, as a sophomore at the University of Texas, Modglin is a regular on podiums as one of the most promising young backstrokers in the country. In 2023, he was named USA Today’s high school swimmer of the year and was the number one recruit in the country. During his freshman year at Texas, he earned All-American honors as part of the medley relay team and was an honorable mention All-American in four other events. He loves the sport enough now – and he sees a future that might someday include a chase for an Olympic medal – that he doesn’t need so many overt bribes anymore. But a little enticement every so often still doesn’t hurt.
“That’s my main focal point, I guess,” he jokes, “Just bribe me, and I’ll swim fast.”
It took a while, even after getting one of those coveted parkas, for Modglin to come to terms with his own potential. Those little material payoffs kept him going: When Modglin and three others wound up qualifying for a state meet in a relay event, he dug right into the goodie bag. “I remember getting that bag with, like, dried bananas and sports nutrition stuff and being like, ‘Dang, this is awesome – I get free snacks just for coming to these meets,’” he says. “But once we started placing on the podium, that was something really cool, too.”
Modglin kept playing soccer up through middle school and still envisioned a future in soccer, not swimming. But the pool increasingly became a place of comfort and companionship for him. He’d spend the summer playing games with his brothers and his friends, including a brutal one they made up called Gladiator, which mostly involved trying to drag his bigger, older brothers to the other side of the pool before his brothers could drag Will and his friends to their side. “I always got to hang out with my friends every day at the pool,” he says. “I think that was a big draw for me.”
When he was 11, Modglin started winning trophies at the state level. Still, he considered quitting swimming for a year to play travel soccer. He was at a hotel for a swim meet when his father told another parent who was on the trip. And the parent pulled Modglin aside and said, Will, why would you do that? You’re an amazing swimmer. Just stick with it.
“And I was like, ‘I guess you’re right,’” Modglin recalls. “‘Maybe I should stick with it.’”
By the time he reached high school in Zionsville, Modglin had found his tribe in the pool. His teammates were his best friends. They also formed one of the best swim teams in the state, and they were motivated to push each other to get better. Modglin became a student of the sport, watching videos and carefully tracking his times. He qualified for the Olympic trials in 2020 at the age of 16. His senior year, he broke the national high school record in the 100-yard backstroke and helped his team to a state record in the 200 freestyle relay, earning him Swimming World’s Male High School Swimmer of the Year award for the second straight season. And since heading to Texas, Modglin found that same camaraderie with his teammates – a healthy balance between the hypercompetitiveness of high-level swimming and the joy of spending time in the pool.
“I have thirty-some guys here who all have the same goals, same aspirations as me, and who are all my best friends,” Modglin says. “So I think that’s something that allows me to go in every day and be like, alright, this is something I love doing. I mean, we’re super-competitive in the pool…but I think the memories that are created, that’s something super-special.”
Last summer, at the Olympic trials in Indianapolis, just a few miles from his hometown, Modglin finished eighth in the 200 individual medley and competed alongside his brother, Coleman, who had just missed the semifinal cut in the 200 breaststroke.
At night, between events, the Modglin family would gather around the dinner table at their home in Zionsville…and inevitably, the talk would turn to swimming, as it always does. “My mom always says, ‘Give them 10 minutes, and they’ll be talking about swimming,” Will Modglin says. “It’s inevitable.”
For Will Modglin, the last active competitive swimmer in his prolific family, the cycle begins anew now, the slow buildup toward the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. It’s far enough away right now that he tries not to dwell on it too much. Instead, he focuses on short-term goals like winning a national championship at Texas and improving both as a backstroker and in his relay events. He’s got his own internal motivation now, with those Olympics looming in his future. But on those days when Modglin is struggling to finish a set, the inner monologue still turns to the enticement of a little bribe at the end of a long race.
“There’s definitely days where it’s like, ‘Alright, if I do this, I’ll treat myself at dinner with a bowl of nice sugary cereal,’” Modglin says. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, I deserve a bowl of Froot Loops.’”