The Open Book
The Open Book
The mystery at the heart of Tanner Filion's unprecedented success
During his Senior year at Division III Whitman College, Tanner Filion was offered an athletic scholarship to swim his 'fifth' and final year of eligibility at Notre Dame.1
A digression on acceptance rates, graduation rates, and the place of Notre Dame in American higher education.2
When asked how that came about, Tanner Filion traces the arc back to the beginning of COVID and to a conversation he had with his father.
The standard Tanner Filion thing
This is a standard Tanner Filion thing, by the way. You ask him about some extraordinary accomplishment—for instance, getting an athletic scholarship to swim for a Power 5 Division I Men's program that finished 10th at D1 Nationals —and he immediately starts weaving other people into the story, taking pains to say how grateful he is for all the help he’s received.
When Tanner Filion speaks of how his love for swimming was incubated through his summer swim team he - without fail - mentions that it was his grandfather who started that team.
In discussing his own athleticism, he’s quick to note that his mother was a world-class triathlete.
He talks about his time at Whitman as if he played a supporting role in his own story, giving center stage to head coach Jen Blomme and her staff.
He repeatedly credits his teammates at both Whitman and Notre Dame for pushing him to maintain high standards for himself through the endless sessions of grueling practice.
At Notre Dame, he attributes his development to the skill, and humanity, of the coaching staff.
When he speaks of his girlfriend, Tanner Filion is judicious in his word choice, suggesting both a respect for her privacy, and a desire to capture just how big a role she played in helping him 'mature as a human being' during a difficult period of his life.
Finally, his father weaves in and out of Tanner Filion's stories as a constant presence and source of good advice, compassion, and humor.
Tanner Filion followed the advice of both his coach and his dad and reached out directly to the coaches at Notre Dame - themselves new to the program and looking for athletes who could make a quick impact. They were pretty excited to hear from Tanner Filion.3
If you are unfamiliar with the Division III accomplishments of Tanner Filion, and what made those accomplishments so remarkable, we recommend you read our first piece on Mr. Filion from earlier this season, Mr. 2,260.
TLDR
2,260 was Tanner Filion's recruit rank coming out of high school, a ranking that generally means you will not be swimming in college, at any level.
Mr. Filion went to Whitman College for the strong academics, the quality of life, the swim team, and ultimate frisbee. And not necessarily in that order.
At Whitman, Mr. Filion quickly developed into one of the best swimmers in the Northwest Conference.
Tanner Filion was not just an incredibly focused and hardworking athlete - he also grew about eight inches during his time in college.
At 2022 Nationals, the first Nationals after COVID, Tanner Filion broke the Division III 200 Back record.
At 2023 Nationals, Tanner Filion broke his own 200 Back record and also set a new 100 Back record.
By our measurement, Tanner Filion's 100 Back record is the 3rd greatest of all Division III records.
Earlier this month, we had another conversation with Mr. Filion, and he volunteered something about his time at Whitman that was news to us.
A turning point
In November, 2020, Tanner Filion's semester - warped beyond recognition by COVID - was coming to an end. For Mr. Filion, that 'semester' amounted to three months of remote coursework and training with friends in Park City. On November 21st, Tanner Filion's mother picked him up and drove him home to Boulder. The next morning, Tanner Filion awoke to get to work on his biology final. His mom made muffins for him and his siblings, and she told them she was going for a hike on nearby Bear Mountain.
Early that afternoon, Tanner Filion's father asked him if he had seen his mom recently. Concerned, Tanner Filion, his brother, and father set out to find her, but were unsuccessful. At 2:30 a.m., a local search and rescue team found where she fell, in steep and rugged terrain, and confirmed that she had passed away. According to Mr. Filion: 'They found one of her shoes at the top. So yeah, I think she was just super unlucky and tripped and fell.'
In contemporary media profiles of Tanner Filion, which became more common when he started breaking records in 2022, he mentions his mother many times, but only once (in a pullout quote on training mindset) does he mention her untimely passing. We asked him if, up until now, he had been uncomfortable talking about it.
He suggested something more subtle, referring to the days after his mom’s death and 'the way people look at you, when they are sitting across the table from you, and your mom just died.' He said he understood those were looks of compassion, and that many of these people were friends of his mom and were themselves in a lot of pain. He knew he needed to attend to that pain - his and others - while home, but he did not want that pain and loss to define him when he went back to college.
She would want me getting after it as best I can
So, partly, he was compartmentalizing. And partly he was giving himself some private space to engage with his mother's memory directly, not simply as a loss signified by the sympathetic looks on the faces of others, but as a memory more vibrant and alive, influencing his understanding of what their relationship meant for his future.
'She was a world-class athlete [Raili Filion qualified for Team USA in triathlon], she loved that part of life, she always encouraged that in me. And she would want me getting after it as best I can.’
‘That just gave me a lot of motivation to train harder. And then that was when I won my first national championship the following year.'
Something unprecedented
As we mentioned, the Notre Dame Men finished 10th at Division I Nationals, so making any sort of mark at Notre Dame would have been an extraordinary accomplishment. And here is Tanner Filion's record in D1, at Notre Dame.
Three-time 2024 NCAA All-American
First Team: 200 free relay
First Team: 400 free relay
Honorable Mention: 200 back
Finished Notre Dame career with three top-5 times in program history (and qualified for Division I Nationals in these three events as well)
Second: 100 back (44.99)
Second: 200 back (1:39.16)
Fourth: 100 fly (45.47)
School record holder
200 free relay: 1:15.42
400 free relay: 2:45.58
As you might have already guessed, asking Tanner Filion how he achieved his successes at Notre Dame will lead to expressions of gratitude for his coaches, the competitive spirit of his teammates, the extraordinary resources and technology available in South Bend, the people in D3 who helped him develop a lifelong passion for swimming...etc.
You get the idea. And that's all good, but many others have had access to similar arrays of resources without reaching the heights he has attained. And many more had their college swimming careers halted by smaller obstacles than the ones Tanner Filion surmounted.
Because Tanner Filion is unusually thoughtful and candid, it is easy to overlook that we are circling something obscure, a mystery that persists even as we learn more.
Beyond the paper and the ink
There are facets of personality that even the most honest self-appraisal does not fully unveil. No obvious explanation accounts for why setbacks only made Tanner Filion more determined, why he is profoundly grateful for things that others seem to take for granted, or the role of this attitude in his essentially unprecedented combined achievements in Division III and Division I swimming.
When we thanked him for sharing so much with us he said 'Oh, yeah. I’m an open book, for sure.'
Yeah, but that's the thing about open books. They only reveal the actual words written on the page. But the mystery lies beyond the paper and the ink. Some people are able to create for themselves a story that brings order to life’s turmoil and captures meaning from an indifferent world, and that ability remains something of a miracle.
This was with the enthusiastic support of his coaches at Whitman. Whitman has no graduate programs, so Mr. Filion would not have been able to swim that fifth-year in Walla Walla. Head Coach Jennifer Blomme approached Mr. Filion and suggested he 'take a look around at what might be out there.'
Acceptance rates for colleges and universities can be misleading. Institutions use various tactics to lower their acceptance rate, including direct mail campaigns and other forms of advertising that generate heaps of applications, nearly all of which the institution knows in advance it will reject. Moreover, Ivy League schools receive a vast number of inappropriate applications simply because of their prestigious status.
A much more significant metric is the graduation rate. That is the best indicator of how well a school selects applicants, the readiness of those chosen, the experience of being at the school, the value the students and families place on that education, and the overall worth of the degree itself. According to the US Department of Education, here are the only accredited, undergraduate degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States with a graduation rate over 96%.
This might be the right time to mention that to converse with Tanner Filion is to encounter some unexpected verbal choices. He occasionally drops absolutely bravura, near Ricky-Henderson-level third person self-references. For instance, at one point he made a comment about the ‘many aspects of being Tanner that I enjoy.’ Of course, when used by a seeming megalomaniac like Ricky Henderson, third-person self-reference scans as an admixture of narcissism and marketing. But Tanner Filion is distractingly empathetic, literally the opposite of narcissistic. So perhaps these third-person self-references simply emanate from his awareness of how others see him. Or maybe he was just joking around.
He also uses the word ‘kind’ as a categorical description, not to describe a single act, but to characterize a person. He used it several times to describe people who, in different ways, showed awareness of other people’s needs and made space for what others need without making a big deal out of it. It is a deep trait, and it connotes something very different than seemingly similar descriptors like ‘nice’.
Inspiring story! By reading this, I feel like I’ve met Tanner vicariously through this article and wow, what a likeable person. Strong work as usual D3so!!