Swimming and rowing could be seen as incompatible sports from the surface level. But when looked at closely, the connection may be deeper than just the water level. 

Marshall Adams is a first-year freestyle/backstroke swimmer for the Ithaca College men’s swim and dive team. Not only is Adams involved in the swim program, but Adams is also a first-year rower for the men’s rowing team. The decision to pursue both sports came later in his career.

“Sophomore year of high school I kind of started to hit a plateau,” Adams said. “I was getting really bored, I mean you’re in a sport that long? By that time I was probably 15, so 13 years of just swimming, I became friends with a bunch of rowers and they’re like, ‘Just try it out for the summer,’ so I did and then I fell in love with it. And I got decently good at it for being a novice. So I joined the rowing team my junior year of high school.”

The decision also comes as something that separates him from the rest of athletes at the college. While there are a number of football players that make the transition over to track and field in the winter, as of right now, Adams is the only officially rostered athlete at the college to have this multiple sport combination. Other notable combinations seen at the college include athletes competing in cross country and track and field and sculling athletes competing in rowing.

Adams comes from a deep-rooted family of swimmers. His father and mother both swam and both his brother and sister also were put into swimming from an early age. Adams’ sister, Morgan, played an especially impactful role in Marshall’s decision to pursue both swimming and rowing. Morgan said her transition to rowing helped influence Marshall’s late turn to it.

“I was swimming forever, so rowing, I fell in love with rowing in a way I didn’t with swimming and I just became obsessed with it,” Morgan said. “Then to have my brother want to do that, and it was [the] assistant coach Sasha Bailey at Canisius [College] who saw my brother and was like, ‘That kid’s built like a rower, he should try out rowing’ and I told him that.”

Marshall was named Canisius High School’s swimming captain and performed well enough in rowing to be mainly recruited as a rower coming out of high school. Adams said men’s rowing head coach Justin Stangel made the offer to him that he would be able to do both sports at the college.

“I had to kind of choose between if I wanted to do one or the other [at other schools] and I think it was coach Stangel who actually gave me a call and he was like, ‘Do you want to do both here?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah that would be great,’” Marshall said. “I think I would have come here either way just because of my program, I’m an environmental science major. The program is really good here, but the fact I can do both is definitely a good bonus.”

Marshall finished the 2023–24 swimming season with impressive totals for a first-year athlete, finishing the swimming season with an eighth place finish in the 400-yard IM at the Liberty League Championships.

The connection between swimming and rowing can be shown through a scientific level. Ithaca College men’s swimming and diving coach Mike Blakely-Armitage said that training in both swimming and rowing can help give an advantage in both sports as a result of similar muscle groups being affected in both.

“I think that between the two sports, there’s that connection between endurance and people that generally like to work hard can find a place,” Blakely-Armitage said. “The rowing coaches are excellent teachers specifically. There hasn’t honestly been that many [dual-sport athletes] mainly because when you go through a whole winter season of swimming, you kind of just want to be done. With the intensity, you kind of need a mental break before you start it again.”

Swimming and rowing are both connected through the muscle groups that are shared in the work of both sports. Rowing and swimming both share a leg dominant motion, which works the quads, glutes and core. Both also are endurance sports which can build off of each other effectively. 

Blakley-Armitage added to this positive correlation between the two sports and said he is not worried about Marshall’s offseason training because he knows with rowing, he will always have the structure to stay ready to swim.

“Sometimes coaches are worried about their athletes like, ‘Oh, you’re playing basketball instead of swimming during the summer time,’ like they’re not related other than like a cardio benefit, but with rowing, he’s still working the main like muscle movers that we use in swimming,” Blakley-Armitage said. “So I’m not really worried about him because I know he’s going to train whereas like some of the other kids on our team it’s like, ‘Ok guys, during the offseason we get in the pool, we gotta train,’ so I know that he’s going to have a structured program.” 

Stangel agreed with Blakely-Armitage and said he fully supports Marshall’s endeavor into both programs.

“If you’re good enough of an athlete to be able to do both, why not?” Stangel said. “I feel like at the Division lll level, that’s part of the ethos of it, to be able to perfect your craft in two different ways and then also be a … good student as well-being able to do that I think is a pretty cool aspect. I think he is good enough of an athlete and I have a good relationship with [Blakely-Armitage] and working with him to make sure we’re both able to achieve what we want.”

Marshall’s pursuit of both sports has made an impression on many of his teammates. Rowing teammate first-year student Max Detzer said Marshall’s work ethic is what drives him to pursue so much.

“I’d like to say he’s hard working as you can see from the leadership role he plays as a freshman,” Detzer said. “That’s something that’s not very common in freshmen to always want to hop out of bed and get to lift 30 minutes early which is kind of crazy even to me.” 

Marshall’s decision to participate in both so early on not only showed his drive but comes from a personal place of always having to be doing something. Marshall said he feels he needs to always have something going on.

“I hate getting bored, I really hate getting bored,” Marshall said. “I feel like a lot of it is that I like being in shape and the one thing I really like about both teams is that I just have friends. I love having friends. That was kind of a fear of mine originally coming here and then I was like, ‘Wait, I’m on two teams, I already have like 100 built-in friends.’ That’s so nice and I can just hang out with whoever and we can all complain about the practice, stuff like that.”

Marshall said that a part of his decision to do both sports was the constant need to feel reinvigorated and that his love for both sports is what drove him to not drop either.

“For me, it’s like asking a parent who their favorite kid is to be honest, they even each other out,” Marshall said. “You get sick of one and then I go into the other and then I get sick of that one. It’s just like a constant rotation. So it definitely evens out like right now, I can’t wait to row.”

Morgan said that while she thought Marshall was crazy when he decided to do both sports at the collegiate level, she knew that his strong drive would lead him to success.

“It shows his dedication and his commitment to the team and I think you could argue that doing two sports is going to stretch yourself too thin, but I think because they are similar and you’re training your body in similar ways for both sports, it’s a benefit for both,” Morgan said. “So it just shows that he’s both dedicated to both sports and it’s not a detriment to do one over the other. So it shows that he cares about both sports and he wants to continue working on it even in the offseason.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article said Adams was the only officially roasted athlete to play multiple sports at the college that is not football and track.