On Saturday, USC senior Reed Malone will don the Trojan swim cap for the very last time.The Winnetka, IL native started off his final NCAA Championship run with a bang on Wednesday, helping teammates Dylan Carter, Patrick Mulcare and Santo Condorelli secure a school record in the 800y free relay, earning a fifth place finish and an All-American award.
Malone can now call himself a six-time All-American, five-time Pac-12 champion, and two-time NCAA Champion, with more accolades potentially on the horizon as competition continues this weekend.
But perhaps no honor defines Malone's character better than his election as the only three-time captain in program history.
Malone believes that since arriving at Troy, his trust in his teammates has fostered their trust in him as a leader.
"I believe in other people," he said. "And I value other people's opinions and other people's skills. I think a lot of people get too worked up about doing stuff on their own, but I value the people around me and what they have that I don't."
Malone said that growing up, his family instilled these ideals in him, helping him "accept other people for however they come" and learn things from other people to make himself better.
Malone's brother, Ryan, was hugely influential in those regards. Ryan (pictured, middle) is 24 -- two years and a month older than Reed -- and he has autism. He struggles with verbal and social skills, and has the propensity to get anxious and act out in public.
Though Reed has been in the middle of a few difficult situations with Ryan, he's always made the best of them, and has translated those experiences directly into his time as a team captain at USC. Dealing with Ryan's outbursts taught Reed to "stay calm in pressure situations and just relax," and dealing with Ryan's limited verbal skills forced Reed to learn to read people without them directly expressing their feelings -- two skills that have surely helped him lead his team for the past three years.
"The more I think about my good qualities, they come from being around Ryan," says Reed.It can be difficult at times to connect through conversation, but Reed and Ryan have bonded during their time in the pool together. Ryan swam on the Special Olympics team in high school, and still swims competitively from time to time. When Reed visits home, he gets in the pool with Ryan and helps him with his stroke, which motivates him to swim much faster.
"He's not Michael Phelps or anything, but he's not bad," says Reed of his older brother, who's competing in a Special Olympics meet this weekend at the same time as NCAAs.
While the brothers have both been involved in swimming since they were young, Reed says Ryan has never fully understood the level at which he competes, but that he enjoys attending Reed's meets and cheering him on.
Reed recalls a moment in his teenage years when he realized how much swimming could mean for him and Ryan.
"When I was 14, I had an age group state meet and I won a bunch of events -- it was pretty cool. I got all these medals and I put them in my bag. I got home from the meet and my dad had coached Ryan to say, 'Oh, good job, Reedy' -- he calls me Reedy. He heard the medals jingling in my bag, and I took them out, and was like, 'Do you want to put them on?' and he just smiled. So I put them on, and the smile on his face when he had them around his neck -- I'll never, ever forget that. A huge reason why I swim is if I can bring that much joy to someone who's so important to me, just by swimming up and down a pool, it makes it that much better. I enjoy the sport as it is, but if I can make him so happy by being relatively successful ... it's really special."
