by Dave Delgado

Guam - 14-year-old Ben Schulte is one of the island's top swimmers in his age group and currently lives in Australia, pursuing his swimming career. He attends Miami High School on the Gold Coast and has been swimming since the age of 5. Ben is dedicated to the sport he loves always looking for ways to improve his strokes and technique all while representing Guam.

"To show how much swimming is part of the Australian culture, they have pools at school and they have swimming competitions in the school and then you go to district, regional, state and nationals, you move up the levels," he said. "That's just in school and then many people come out at 5am just for recreational swimming and then you have the competitive swimmers who are dedicated."

Ben swims 6,000-7,000 meters during a typical training session up to eight times a week, focusing on his strength and getting in a lot of core exercise. After attending a swim camp and talking to one of the trainers his family decided to make the move to Australia to learn from head coach Dennis Cotteril who has trained numerous world champions. Ben places top 10 in the breast-stroke and top 20 in most strokes for his age in Australia where meets see anywhere from 500 to 2,000 swimmers.

"My ultimate goal is to go to the Olympics and at least final or at least medal but the one that I'm really shooting for is to get a full scholarship to Stanford University," he shared.