Olivia Roschat didn't come from the typical pipeline that feeds university swimming.

Roschat grew up in the B.C. Summer Swimming Association, where the season lasts four months, and winter training is capped at two hours per week. It's a system built for fun and fairness, not producing varsity athletes and U SPORTS finalists.

Yet five years after walking onto the University of Victoria swim team with no recruiting fanfare, Roschat is finishing her varsity career as one of the conference's top backstrokers—even after navigating an obstacle that nearly pushed her out of the sport entirely.

The majority of varsity swimmers tend to come up one way. Year-round club swimming, early morning practices and thousands of metres logged before even learning to drive.

Roschat's path looked nothing like that.

She grew up in Delta, B.C., racing in the summer league, where neighbourhood teams gather on pool decks and the rules are simple: if you want to stay a summer swimmer, you can't train more than two hours a week during the winter.
While it keeps the playing field even, it also means that very few swimmers from that system go on to become varsity-level elite swimmers.

"I had competed in 50-metre events, but never in a long-course setting," Roschat said.

That changed when she decided to attend UVic and reached out to the coaches about trying out for the team. It was 2021-22, mid way through COVID, so major gatherings were limited, and the environment felt less pressurized, with most time spent training.

For Roschat, who hadn't competed since 2019, the jump was enormous.

After a lifetime of swimming only four months a year, she suddenly found herself in the water for close to 18 hours a week and, as expected, the results came quickly. Swimmers who make that jump often improve fast. Roschat did more than that. In her first season, she qualified for the U SPORTS Championships through a time trial in the 100 metre backstroke. In her first-ever nationals' appearance, she made the C final.

On paper, it looked like a breakout season, but despite her immediate success, Roschat began to struggle, and imposter syndrome started creeping in.

After qualifying for nationals, Roschat contracted COVID. Despite meticulously following the return-to-sport protocol, things hadn't improved when she returned to training.

"The water felt different," she said. "I was really tired all the time, and I felt off. I started blacking out when I was pushing off the wall."

At first, it was hard to explain. Maybe lingering illness? Maybe accompanying fatigue from the past two seasons and all the extra training volume?

Months later, in August of 2022, Roschat was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), which is a type of nervous system dysautonomia that affects her blood pressure, heart rate, and how her nervous system responds to stress, while also causing extreme fatigue, low blood pressure, and syncope.

It's the kind of diagnosis that complicates everyday life, but it's especially difficult for someone whose sport requires holding their breath underwater while pushing their body to its limits. The next two seasons became a test of persistence.

Roschat was constantly managing symptoms—monitoring hydration, watching her blood pressure, managing her fatigue and learning what her body could and couldn't handle. Before practices and competitions, she began checking her blood pressure as part of her routine.

Midway through her third season, another setback arrived. She fractured the fifth metatarsal in her foot, which kept her out of the water for five months. Swimming suddenly began to feel like a chore, and she wondered if she could even continue. Would she ever feel normal again? Could she live up to her own expectations?

Through it all, one part of the sport stayed constant: summer swimming.

Roschat kept coaching in the same community system where she started, passing along the sport in the same relaxed, welcoming way she first experienced it. Meanwhile, her own relationship with swimming began to change.

By her fourth year, things started to stabilize. She learned how to manage her POTS symptoms, understand her triggers, and adjust training to what her body could handle, and the expectations she once carried began to loosen.

"I just wanted to see what I could do," she said.

It turned out to be quite a lot.

She qualified for the 2024 U SPORTS Swimming Championships, where she reached the A final of the 50-metre backstroke and finished eighth in the country. She also raced the 50 freestyle and 100 backstroke.

Then last summer, racing in familiar water at Saanich Commonwealth Place, she reached the final of the 50-metre backstroke at the Canadian Olympic Trials.

For someone who once wondered whether she belonged, it was a full-circle moment.

Now in her fifth and final season, Roschat has already qualified for U SPORTS again and will race all three backstroke events. However, the way she sees the sport has shifted. There's less urgency now and less pressure to prove anything.

"I'm just trying to enjoy every last little bit," she said. "It's been so fun seeing the team improve and watching everyone come together. We've got a really close-knit group and the culture is really strong right now."

For years, swimming asked Roschat to adapt—to new training, a new level, a new reality inside her own body. But now, heading toward one final national championship, she's simply letting herself be part of it.

And for someone who started in a four-month summer league and wasn't sure she belonged in varsity swimming at all, that might be the most meaningful finish of all.