By: Madeleine Mullins (Edward R. Murrow College of Communication)
 
Dori Hathazi has been recruited by swim coaches her entire life. She remembers her parents taking her to swim lessons as a young girl, just to teach her to stay afloat, and coaches approaching her parents there. Coaches told her parents she was good in the water, had good technique.

"So they were like, I think she could be a pretty good swimmer. She's talented," Hathazi said.

The same thing happened as Hathazi was deciding where to swim in college.

"I actually didn't look. A bunch of schools texted me, like 10 of them," said Hathazi, who in 2024, became one of six swimmers in Washington State University history to return to the NCAA Championships in back-to-back years.

WSU coaches were the first coaches Hathazi talked to in the recruiting process, and after speaking with them, she decided that WSU would be the perfect fit.

"They seemed to know what they were doing and I just, like, I felt like I needed a change because I've been growing up in my town swimming there from the early ages," Hathazi said. "I just felt like I needed time apart from home."

For Hathazi, time apart from home meant traveling halfway around the world,  from Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, to Pullman, Washington. She said she had to adjust to "huge change."

"What I really miss about home is food, for sure," Hathazi said. "And obviously my family, but other than that, I like being here."

The transition to college helped reignite Hathazi's love of swimming, which propelled her to success in the record books. Hathazi was one of two freshmen in WSU history, along with teammate Emily Lundgren, to earn a trip to the NCAA Championships in 2023. She set the school record for the 200-meter butterfly, was named her team's Newcomer of the Year and was selected to swim for Team Hungary at the World University Games in China. In 2024, Hathazi placed 36th in the 200-meter butterfly at the NCAA Championships.

Despite all of these accomplishments, Hathazi is set on getting better.

"This year at the NCAA's, I swam the same time as I did last year," Hathazi said. "I want to be each year better than the previous year. I just try to improve my time and my records here."

Breaking those records and times has always been Hathazi's goal and a benchmark for her to determine her success.

"My first race, not long after I learned to swim, I got on the podium. So that was the first time when I thought that this was going to work. After that, I kept racing and I kept winning medals, and I remember my first international meet when I was 12 was my first huge feedback," Hathazi said.

Despite the praise and awards, Hathazi's goal is to each year be better than her last, and to be the best swimmer she can be in her final two years at WSU.