Aspirations abound for swimming’s Sabadeanu

VERMILLION, S.D.—Sabrina Sabadeanu’s love of swimming began with a love of the water. In this case, that meant the other side of the Atlantic Ocean with trips to see her grandparents in Europe.

Then she just kept swimming. She still is, in fact, as a senior for the University of South Dakota swim team that is preparing for the Summit League meet to be held Feb. 19-22 in Sioux Falls.

“I started swimming competitively when I was 6,” Sabadeanu said. “I’ve been infatuated with the water my whole life. My family’s from Europe so I’d always been by the ocean. I started with swim lessons and you just couldn’t take me out of the water.”

Sabadeanu is Romanian but was born in the United States and has lived in Colorado for most of her life. She spent many of her summers overseas when she was growing up, however.

Her dual-citizenship means she could try to qualify for the Romanian Olympic team following this, her final season, as a collegian. It is a complicated business qualifying as an Olympian in Romania when you live in the United States, but she plans to pursue it after the college season.

There’s a conference meet to focus on, for one thing. And then she has to decide whether to continue her pursuit of a career – she intends to be a physician assistant – or take a break from that to pursue the Olympics.

Becoming a physician assistant also qualifies as a dream. Sabadeanu’s background is full of dreams. It starts with her parents leaving Romania in pursuit of a better life and has since then moved forward for this perennial Summit League honor roll student. She’s completing her degree in four years with the opportunity to add to that with post-graduate work.

“When you break the whole thing down, it’s a pretty amazing story,” said USD coach Jason Mahowald. “When you think about where her parents came from and how this has worked out for Sabrina, that’s a pretty cool thing to be a part of.”

A year ago, Sabadeanu was an All-Summit performer in six of the seven events she competed in. She currently has the second-fastest time in the conference in both the 100-meter backstroke and the 200-meter backstroke.

Her accomplishments have come via a no-nonsense approach to training and practice. In short, she’s not inclined to take a day off. This idea that a swimming season is set up so that swimmers are at their strongest at the end of the season – sometimes at the expense of mid-season meets – has not been a perfect match with her competitiveness. Sabadeanu wants to be at her fastest all the time.

Sabadeanu comes from a background where hard work is an expectation. That makes it a little difficult to chill-out, even in a sport where it’s essentially built into a season. Her mother was an accomplished gymnast as a youngster and went on to play professional volleyball in Romania.

“We put a very big emphasis on working hard,” Sabadeanu said. “It’s not about getting things half-done. You’re either in it to win it or it’s time to try something else.”

Sabadeanu has never had to make a decision on that count. It’s never been a question of her desire to be at her best and to encourage others to do the same. Her love of the sport is unique in Mahowald’s 15 years directing the USD program.

“I say this in a very complimentary way – I’ve never coached a kid like her before,” he said. “She has so much love for swimming. If you would talk about swimming ending, she’d tell you it’s not going to happen. She just loves this sport.”

She’s the first to say the water has been good to her. It helped her gain access to a college education that, based on her efforts in the classroom, is going to lead to a promising career in medicine. It also led her to Vermillion, where she has thrived both in the pool and on dry ground.

“I picked USD because it was family-oriented,” she said. “I wouldn’t be known as a number here, I’d be known as Sabrina. Coming here and having my education here and swimming here, I needed that support. 

“Motivating me is that my coaches and I are on the same page. My lifting coach is on the same page. They know my goals, they know what I’m shooting for. They always do what they can to try to set me up for success.”