Austin Parrish’s first race of his senior swimming season ended up being his last race, too.
Parrish got out of the pool in Indianapolis after the 200-yard individual medley and felt numbness and tingling in his right arm. His right hand looked purple and blue.
He found his Eastern Illinois University coach to let her know he couldn’t swim his second race that day.
Since that Oct. 21 race, Parrish has not been in the pool. He saw an orthopedic surgeon Nov. 2 that led to his decision to end his career.
Four months from completing his college career, Parrish feels the ending has been taken from him.
“It’s sad. It’s frustrating because all I want to do is wake up and go to practice with the team and be in the water and finish what I started four years ago,” Parrish said. “I just was in a funk all last week after finding out. I cried to my roommates because I wasn’t ready to be done.”
Parrish, who came out publicly as gay during his freshman year, started experiencing numbness in his arm during a practice Sept. 20. He was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome. Between the diagnosis and the first meet, Parrish and the school trainers tried to treat it with physical therapy.
His coach asked him to consider redshirting this year and see if his health improves and return for a fifth year, but Parrish feels ready to move on academically in his pursuit of becoming a surgeon. For the rest of the season, Parrish, who finished 15th in the 1,650-yard freestyle at the 2016 Summit League Championships, will act as a team manager.
Parrish said he plans to have surgery to fix the condition since the symptoms have started to result from more than swimming. He said simply walking around campus recently has caused numbness in his arm. He said doctors have given him no indication this is related to heart problems that sidelined him part of last season.
“I have to look at the bigger picture,” the 22-year-old Parrish said. “Swimming has been part of my life for the last 17 years. That was my biggest challenge was that I had to stop even though my heart didn’t want me to. I had to just so I didn’t cause more problems.”
Names in bold are people that have announced publicly they identify as LGBT.
Division I
Nicholle Aston (senior, Cornell women’s basketball) scored 14 points and had three rebounds in the team’s season-opening 61-56 win against New Hampshire. She followed that with seven points and five rebounds in Sunday’s 58-50 win against Loyola (Md.).
Schuyler Bailar (sophomore, Harvard men’s swimming) finished 10th in both the 100-yard breaststroke (1:00.37) and 200 breaststroke (2:17.13) on Friday against Dartmouth and Cornell.
Kendall Covington (junior, Penn women’s volleyball) went 0-4 the last two weeks, and the Quakers end the season 10-16 overall, 5-9 Ivy League. Covington’s best match in the stretch came Friday against Columbia with 10 kills. Her 180 kills this season ranks fourth on the team, and she led the team with 54 blocks.
Mason Darrow (senior, Princeton football) played as a reserve Nov. 5 against Penn and started at center Saturday against Yale. The Tigers (7-2 overall) won both games.
Chandler Frumin (junior, Tennessee women’s rowing) teamed with Mikayla Dutton to win the 20-team women’s 2x competition during the Head of the Hooch regatta Nov. 5. They rowed 5,000 meters in 19:12.8 on the Tennessee River.
Connor Griffin (sophomore, Fordham men’s swimming) competed in four events during the Princeton Invitational on Friday and Saturday, and his best finish was 19th in the 400 individual medley (4:20.60).
Hannah Griffiths Boston (junior, Portland women’s soccer) did not play in the season finale Nov. 4. Griffiths Boston finished with a team-high eight goals for the season, despite missing the final three games after an injury.
Bree Horrocks (junior, Purdue women’s basketball) started at center and played 12 minutes with two rebounds and one assist in Friday’s season opener against Maine, which Purdue lost. She played one minute as a reserve in Saturday’s loss to Villanova.
Sonia Johnson (junior, DePaul women’s soccer) ended the season with a loss to Georgetown during a Big East Tournament semifinal Nov. 4. Johnson did not play in the game. The game ended 1-1, and Georgetown won 5-4 on penalty kicks.
Ayrton Kasemets (junior, Oakland men’s swimming) competed in his first full meet Nov. 4-5 at Illinois-Chicago by swimming three individual races and three relays. He missed the start of the season due to shoulder surgery then swam two races Oct. 29. His best individual finishes at UIC were 10th in the 100 breaststroke (1:00.48) and 200 breaststroke (2:16.27). Competed in three events Saturday against Eastern Michigan and finished seventh in all three (100 breaststroke, 200 breaststroke, 200 medley relay).
Cory Moreno (junior, Old Dominion men’s diving) won the 1- and 3-meter springboard competitions in a dual meet at Maryland-Baltimore County on Nov. 5, which resulted in him earning CCSA Diver of the Week for the second time this season. Against Georgetown on Saturday, he won the 3-meter (333.45) and took fifth in 1-meter.
EJ Proctor (junior, Duke women’s soccer) made two saves in goal during her team’s 3-0 win against Charlotte in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday in Durham. It is her ninth shutout of the season and 20th of her career.
G Ryan (junior, Michigan women’s swimming) swam five events Nov. 4-5 at Virginia with Ryan’s best finishes a pair of second places behind Olympic gold medalist Leah Smith in both the 500 freestyle (4:43.91) and 1,000 freestyle (9:40.32).
Max Showalter (sophomore, Purdue men’s diving) said he did not compete Nov. 4 at Iowa due to a sore tricep.
Jack Thorne (sophomore, Northwestern men’s swimming) finished 12th in the 200 backstroke (1:53.79) and 13th in the 100 backstroke (52.88 seconds) Nov. 4-5 at Kentucky.
Kenzie Tillitt (senior, Colorado women’s soccer) came off the bench to help the No. 20-ranked Buffaloes (15-5-1) defeat Oklahoma State 3-1 on Saturday in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Colorado plays the next round at South Carolina. Colorado ended the regular season Nov. 4 by tying Utah 1-1, and the result put Colorado and Southern California in a tie for second place in the Pac-12 regular season final standings at 8-2-1.
Wayne Zhang (junior, Yale men’s diving) took fifth on 3-meter springboard and sixth on 1-meter in the season-opening meet Nov. 5 at Brown. Again achieved fifth on 3-meter and sixth on 1-meter Saturday against Columbia at Yale.
Jamie Bissett (assistant coach, Michigan men’s and women’s diving) saw Kristen Hayden lead the Wolverines with a win in the women’s 1-meter springboard during a Nov. 4-5 meet at Virginia.
Chris Burns (assistant coach, Bryant men’s basketball) saw his team lose its season-opener against Notre Dame, 89-64, on Saturday in South Bend, Ind. Bryant is picked to finish third in the Northeast Conference by the league’s coaches.
James Finley (head coach, Seattle women’s volleyball) guided his team to a 1-2 record the last two weeks. Seattle (13-14 overall, 6-8 WAC) earned the No. 6 seed in the WAC Tournament.
Patrick Jeffrey (Stanford men’s and women’s diving coach) oversaw Haley Farnsworth’s third- (1-meter) and fourth-place (3-meter) results Saturday against Texas.
Lee-J Mirasolo (assistant coach, Harvard women’s hockey) watched the Crimson (1-4 overall) go 0-2 the last two weeks with losses to Princeton and Quinnipiac.
Stephanie White (head coach, Vanderbilt women’s basketball) opened the season with a win Friday against Kennesaw State (86-54) but lost Sunday at Indiana (94-61).
Division II
Austin Olivares (senior, Lindenwood men’s swimming) competed in six events during the Drury Invitational on Nov. 4-5, and his best finishes were fifth place in both the 200 freestyle relay and 800 freestyle relay. On Saturday, he swam three events, and in his only individual event, Olivares took second in the 200 butterfly (1:59.89).
Noah Ratliff (sophomore, Mercyhurst men’s water polo) helped the team win the Collegiate Water Polo Association Mid-Atlantic West Division tournament title by going 3-0 Nov. 5-6, and Ratliff had one steal in two of the three games. Mercyhurst (13-11 overall) now faces George Washington in the Mid-Atlantic Championships on Nov. 18.
Division III
Chloe Anderson (junior, UC Santa Cruz women’s volleyball) saw the Banana Slugs (10-13 overall) lose to William Jessup on Nov. 1 in the season finale. She played in six matches and had four kills this season.
Chris Cassingham (junior, Mary Washington men’s swimming) finished fifth in the 1,000 freestyle at Johns Hopkins on Friday but withdrew from his other races due to illness.
Alec Donovan (sophomore, Centenary men’s cross country and wrestling) said he did not run in Saturday’s NCAA Atlantic Regional due to an ankle injury.
Josh Thorne (sophomore, Mount Union men’s cross country) finished 79th overall (26:32.4) and seventh on his team in Saturday’s 8-kilometer NCAA Great Lakes Regional, helping the Raiders finish fourth as a team. Mount Union advanced to the NCAA Championships in Louisville, Kentucky.
Erik Hall can be reached via email at [email protected] or on Twitter @HallErik or on Facebook. If you are an out LGBT athlete or coach and want your accomplishments recognized, please email Erik.
