Victory lap: ASU swim club president reflects on time spent as a Sun Devil

In lane six, Liam Clarke sits at the edge of the SDFC pool one last time. | Photo courtesy of Jr De Chavez, ASU Student Life

Dive in, the water’s fine. 

To people like Liam Clarke, diving into the deep ends of life is not something new or out of the ordinary. For Clarke, his ventures in navigating the waters we call life have brought him halfway across the world and back.  

“I’m not from Arizona,” Clarke said. “I was born in Washington D.C., then a few weeks later, we moved to Bali for a couple of years. Then we went to Bangkok and then Shanghai. Then we went to Budapest, back to Shanghai, to Cleveland, to Atlanta and then I came here.” 

Suffice it to say, Clarke moved around quite a bit, but as the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome — “Rome” in this case being Tempe, Arizona. 

“I came out to Arizona for spring break one year and I toured ASU and I fell in love with the campus, so that’s where I ended up,” Clarke said. 

Since childhood, Clarke loved and found a sense of community and belonging in swimming. Upon arriving at the university, he strived to find that connection again as an adult.

“My parents pushed it on me initially. I think I was about maybe eight or nine years old, we lived in Shanghai and I joined the swim team there at the school,” Clarke said. “I actually hated swimming for a long time, but I stuck with it and eventually, I fell in love with it. So I swam my whole life from then on. So when I came to ASU, I wanted to join the swim club so I looked into it. I joined my sophomore year and couldn't be happier.” 

While Clarke did join other campus clubs and organizations,  the swim club was “the only one that I ended up sticking with.”

And stick with it he did — Clarke went on to become one of the swim club’s most consequential members during his tenure. 

“I've been on the board for the swim club for the past couple years. I started as their meet director and then I became their vice president and now I'm the president — well, I'm finishing up as the president now —  and especially this past year, there was a lot of work that needed to be done.” 

Some of the work that Clarke alluded to was being a part of the group that organized the first-ever College Club Swimming National Championship on the West Coast here in Tempe, Arizona. 

“It’s the biggest thing that we’ve done during my last year here,” Clarke said. “College Club Swimming is the overseeing organization for all college club swimming programs in the U.S., and every year there’s nationals and they’ve always been on the East Coast. They’ve usually been in Atlanta, Ohio or Indiana because they have great pools out there, but my team and I have worked so hard this past year and we put in a bid to host the first-ever West Coast nationals, and we won!” 

It’s this reliance in his team that ultimately led to them as a collective landing the opportunity to host the College Club Swimming nationals — which is slated for March 2025. That said, being a president was not always a walk in the park for Clarke. He spoke at length to the ups and downs he faced when trying to hit his stride as a leader. 

“At the beginning of the year, I had no idea what I was doing. To be honest, when I got the position, I was super excited about it, super grateful, but I’ve never had to lead a team like that so I started off unsure how to do it,” Clarke said. 

What really worked for him was relying on his team, and coming to the consensus that there really isn’t an “I” in “team.” 

A man in his element. Liam Clarke in his favorite spot on campus, the SDFC pool. | Photo courtesy of Jr De Chavez, ASU Student Life

“I had some ideas of my own, but I realized I needed to use my resources,” Clarke said. “I needed to listen to the people that were around me and get their ideas because it’ll make my job easier.” 

When asked if this is what he hoped to accomplish during his tenure in the swim club, Clarke had this to say.

“I realized — I mean it sounds very obvious — but you can't get opportunities that you don't apply for. And so, I think before I came here, and even at the like first half of my college years, I was too nervous to apply for something like that. I would feel like I wasn't good enough to apply for it. That I didn’t have a chance.” 

What shifted Clarke out of this “Why I can’t,” in favor of a “Why can’t I,” mentality was a close friend of his.

“One of my friends, he pushed me a little bit and he said, ‘You have nothing to lose. If you don't apply, you don't get it. If you apply and you don't get it, you're still at the same spot. But at least you learned something along the way.’ And I realized he was right,” Clarke said. “I started applying for positions and I surprised myself in the end. I got things I never thought I would get — like the nationals bid. I think the biggest thing I've learned is that you never know. You can never tell yourself you're not good enough for something until you try, because you really don't know.” 

Clarke carried this mentality into his academics, where it helped him steer into a path more in line with his desires. 

“I started off here as an entrepreneurship major and after about a year and a half I realized it wasn't what I wanted to do,” Clarke said. “So thankfully in the business school, it's a requirement that you take classes in different areas of business, and so, I took the supply chain class and I thought it was so fascinating.” 

It was after taking this course, that Clarke was reaffirmed in what he wanted to do. As a result, he immediately switched majors to supply chain management. Specifically, Clarke credits Professor Eddie Davila and the Supply Chain 300 class he taught as the biggest motivating factor to switch. 

“[Davila] is such an enthusiastic teacher. He puts on a show every time. So every time I went to class I was excited, because I never knew what to expect, and he made it so interesting. Even the people who didn’t end up doing supply chain, that didn’t find supply chain interesting, they still found his class interesting. And that was because of the way he taught and the way he inspired students,” Clarke said. “I can confidently say if I didn’t take his class, I would not have swapped to supply chain, and my life would look very different. He definitely changed my trajectory, so I’m thankful for that.” 

This is a lot coming from someone who “didn't know what supply chain was before [taking the class].”

Clarke was asked what gave him the confidence to make tough decisions — like bidding with the College Club Swimming committee and switching his majors on a whim. 

Clarke said to “just try it, trust yourself to figure it out. Like when you join something new, you never know what to expect, and that can be a little intimidating. But if you just go for it and you trust yourself, you'll figure things out and you'll figure out if it's right or not for you as well.” 

This sort of inspiration, belief in oneself — almost self-idealization — is something that Clarke hopes to at one point educate the youth and future generations. 

“When I was in high school, even before high school, a lot of my self-doubt that I talked about — that came from my experience in school,” Clarke said. “I think there’s a better way to teach kids, to help them learn and grow. I don’t know what it is, but at some point in my life, I do want to start working on that. Maybe adjusting the way the American education system works pre-college because once you get to college, you get to choose what you want to study, you really get to choose what you’re exposed to and you get to pave your own way.” 

It goes without saying, but Clarke, in true swimmer’s fashion, has gone with the flow and rode the motions of his life. In graduating from ASU, he has made waves that will not only propel him into the future but create ripples that will stand the test of time. 

Clarke earned his Bachelor of Science in both supply chain management and sustainability from the W. P. Carey School of Business in May 2024. He is set to relocate to Seattle, Washington later this year to work for Boeing in their supply chain division. Even with that, he expects to return to Arizona to attend the College Club Swimming nationals in March.

He still swims: “Once a week, twice a week I'll find myself swimming for sure.”