Men's Volleyball: Getting his Schwag on

You could call the Schwaglers a volleyball family. For the eldest of the family’s three sons, it took a mother’s prodding to start playing the sport. But for freshman outside hitter Pat, dedication to the sport was never a question.

“Volleyball is a way of life,” Schwagler said. “I can’t really explain it, but it is.”

Schwagler’s first exposure to the game came at an early age, when the Orchard Park, N.Y., resident would go to all of his older brothers’ matches.

“That was really what made me get started,” he said. “I kept seeing them play, and then I got into it on my own.”

Looking at the six-foot-three-inch hitter’s lanky frame, it is almost impossible to tell that he was not always tall. Yet until high school, Schwagler was, by his own admission, “pretty short” — a formidable deficiency in a sport that rewards height above all else.

His size initially made Schwagler — nicknamed “Schwags” by his teammates — a libero, the one member of the squad whose job is almost never to actually make a kill. It was an imprecise fit for a player whose politeness and soft-spoken nature belie a ferocious competitiveness.

“When I first met Pat, he seemed very mild-mannered,” head coach Sam Shweisky explained. “But after watching him play in practice a few times, I realized that when he turns it up, when he really gets the fire going, he’s absolutely incredible and very hard to stop.”

Schwagler is currently one of the team’s two starting outside hitters — a position that requires tremendous athleticism, quickness and agility.

While the role would test even the most polished athlete, Shweisky said that the freshman has adjusted well.

“He has a fantastic jump,” Shweisky said. “He just finds a way to put the ball away again and again.”

The season’s statistics tell the story of Schwagler’s strong contributions so far.

He has registered at least 10 kills in every match he has played but one, and he has on numerous occasions tallied 15 or more in a single instance. His most recent performance was perhaps his best: Against Springfield, one of the Tigers’ chief opponents in the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, Schwagler had 31 kills and an astounding .440 hitting percentage.

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“Every single facet of Pat’s game has improved since the fall,” Shweisky said. “He’s started passing better, he’s been blocking better, and he’s been serving with more consistency. What’s been really impressive, though, is that as a freshman he’s started to take on a bit of a leadership role. The thing is, we know that not everybody is going to be on point on every night, and when someone is off, we look to other people to step up. That’s what Pat did against Springfield. He looked around and said, ‘Well, I guess this is my night.’ ”

Part of Schwagler’s tenacity stems from the significant tournament and match experience that he accumulated before arriving at Princeton. Schwagler’s high school team won the state championship his sophomore year — an accomplishment that Schwagler says “pumps [him] up” even today.

“When I first got here, the outgoing coaching staff gave me a rundown on the recruiting class,” Shweisky said. “They mentioned Pat and the fact that he played [at the national level]. I hadn’t met him at the time, but I thought that it was pretty cool that he would come here even though his teammates were going to [volleyball powerhouses] like UCLA and Pepperdine.”

“What really made an impression on me, though, is that when I asked some of the older players about Pat and some of the other freshmen, they told me that he was the real deal,” Shweisky added.

For his part, Schwagler is unassuming and modest, seemingly happy simply to be at Princeton, playing well on a successful team.

“Not many teams expected us to be in second place at this point,” Schwagler said. “We’ve been working extremely hard, and it’s been really awesome to see it pay off.”