2026 Chesterton Athletic Hall of Fame: Tyler Fozkos swam for two Chesterton state champions was state champion in the 50-yard freestyle twice and took home four first-place medals in relays and 14 medals overall

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Tyler Fozkos’ collection of first-place medals from the IHSAA state swim and dive championship meet for Chesterton is a massive one.
Team titles (2): 2008, 2009.
Relay titles (4): 2008 (two), 2009, 2010.
Individual titles (2): 2009, 2010.
Only the eight participants who reach the finals in an event medal at state. Fozkos won seven medals in individual events and seven in relays.
The state champ in the 50 free as a sophomore and junior, he was runner-up as a senior and fourth as a freshman. He picked up two second-place medals and a third in the 100 free.
Fozkos also swam for four first-place relays at state, including two as a freshman: 200-yard medley (Adam Thieling, Albert Miller, Kyle Whitaker, Fozkos) and 200 free relay (Fozkos, Thieling, Gregory Franzen, Bill Bass).
All that’s needed to know how strong a swimming reputation that Fozkos carried into high school is that as a freshman he swam on a pair of state championship relays, the 200-yard medley and the 200 free, and still fell short of expectations at the meet.
He recalled a conversation about that day with legendary Chesterton swim coach Kevin Kinel, a chat that made these words of Duneland Swim Club coach Jim Voss echo all the louder: “Hard work will beat talent every day that talent doesn’t work hard.“
And it’s not that Fozkos didn’t work hard, but the experience taught him to turn over every stone. He was sick the day of the state meet.
“Coach Kinel and I had a conversation after my freshman year about talent is only going to take me so far,” said Fozkos, who moved from Highland to Chesterton when he was in fourth grade. “It kind of showed. If anybody knew what I had done before my freshman year, fourth place in the 50 free was a little lackluster and not even making it back in the 100 freestyle was very disappointing. Coach said you are sick. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure you aren’t walking outside with wet hair.”
Never mind that he and teammate Sean Swibes were so sick that they were on IVs during the week preparing for the state meet. The challenge became how to dig beneath the surface level to find a way for that not to happen again.
Fozkos remains grateful to Kinel for more than scripting the right workouts and motivating him in multiple ways. He also appreciates how the Hall of Fame coach explained the reasons behind each aspect of the training.
“My step from my freshman to my sophomore year was one where you understand the theory and you grow up a little and you say, ‘OK, I’m going to do more small things correctly because the big things are already taken care of.’ I’m showing up for practice on time. I’m doing all the times,” Fozkos said. “We’re killing these practices, and Coach is like, ‘Wow, these guys are the fastest guys I’ve ever seen in my life and he’s thinking: How can I challenge these guys to get faster?’”
The answer, Fozkos said, was not to increase the quantity of the workouts, rather to improve the quality of the practice sets by setting faster time expectations for each one, raising the bar to their talent level.
With Whitaker, Bass and Fozkos leading the way, the team successfully defended their state title in 2009.
Fozkos won his first of back-to-back 50 free titles, took third in the 100 free, and this time his relay mates in the victorious 200 medley that set a state record were Whitaker, Matt Roseicki and Bass. The 200 free relay was the runner-up, giving Fozkos two firsts, a second and a third at the meet.
He made two more trips to the top step of the medal stand as a junior when he defended his title in the 50 and swam with Roseicki, Taylor Zakhar and Whitaker on the winning 200 free relay. Fozkos also earned runner-up medals in the 100 free and the 200 medley relay swimming with the same three teammates.
In all, Fozkos shared the first-place stand with seven different relay teammates: Whitaker (3), Bass (2), Thieling (2), Roseicki 2, Franzen, Miller and Zakhar.
Each relay teammate made Fozkos a better swimmer and he had the same impact on them, but he said it goes deeper than that.
“It’s every person every day trying to get better and it’s not just Lane 1, it’s Lane 8 as well because if the bottom end of the team starts getting faster that’s going to push the top end as well,” he said. “I have many a teammate who joined their freshman year of high school who would say, ‘Hey, you guys have a lot of success. You’re guys I already hang out with, I’d like to learn to swim.’ They end up being competitive later on. It’s one of those success stories where it’s a little bit of the coaching staff helping develop these kids, and kids being instilled with confidence who want to continue to try to get better. You get a little taste of a best time and then you drop three or four seconds in the 500. It would be the same as me dropping a tenth of a second and you get super stoked about it.”
The faster a swimmer becomes the more difficult it is to get even faster.
“My five-second time drops ended when I was 14 years old,” Fozkos said. “Then I was trying to nickel and dime the clock for every hundredth of a second for my best time.”
Fozkos appreciated Kinel for welcoming athletes to talk swimming theory with him and also noted the assistant coaches devoted to bringing out the best in all Trojans, young and old, super talented and not as talented: “Coach Jim Voss was a part of it, Terry Lipinskis, Pat Ward. You had all these guys and gals giving up their free time. Nobody necessarily wants to be at a pool when it’s still dark outside in the middle of winter, but they show up and know that success will come from the long days. We were very fortunate to have the coaches that Coach put around him to continue to grow the team and the sport at Chesterton High school and in Indiana swimming.”
A year-round swimmer, Fozkos didn’t compete in another sport in high school until his swimming career ended. He joined the track and field team and tried his hand at a popular event in his family. His father, Brian, was one of the girls’ pole vault coaches. His sister, Ashley, still holds the school record that she set in 2007 (12 feet).
Tyler enjoyed dabbling in the sport but no college was going to ease his financial burden in exchange for him competing in the air as a relative novice.
Fozkos landed a swimming scholarship to attend Florida State, where he majored in chemical engineering and reveled in the atmosphere of big-time college football early in Jimbo Fisher’s 10-year run as head coach of the Seminoles.
“FSU was the perfect balance of academics, athletics and social life,” Fozkos said. “I was blessed to be able to watch very good football. The ’Noles won the national title in ’13 (title game played Jan. 6, 2014). It was a very exciting time to watch Seminole football. And I didn’t change colors too much going to college. I just changed a maroon for a garnett.”
Even though Tyler’s job as a production engineer on a chemical unit for a company that makes aerospace-grade carbon fiber makes him “one of those few people who does exactly what their degree taught them,” he said the most valuable lessons came outside the classrooms where he took advanced science and mathematics classes.
“I learned a lot. I forgot a lot. But the biggest thing I learned was time management,” he said. “You have four courses. You may have three exams on the same day or in the same week and a project due that week, so it’s just about balancing everything, and then you’re waking up at 4:30 for a 5 o’clock practice and then you have a morning full of classes and then lunch and afternoon practice and somehow you fit some studying in there and some sleep as well.”
All the lessons he learned have led him to a job that suits him in a town that he and wife, Colleen, consider ideal for raising a family and one well suited to their active lifestyles. They moved to Greenville, South Carolina from South Bend, where Colleen had been a strength and conditioning coach at the University of Notre Dame.
They make good use of the 28-mile Swamp Rabbit Trail, a greenway that traverses along the Ready River and connects to the city of Travelers Rest.
Greenville is less than a two-and-a-half hour drive from Augusta, Georgia, site of the Masters. It’s close enough that the azaleas bloom at the Fozkos home at about the same time as at Augusta National.
Tyler and Colleen welcomed their first child, son Rory, into the world in July, 2026. So, the azaleas are not the only link between their home and Augusta. The main attractions at both places share a name.
“Our son has never known a different Masters champion,” Fozkos said of Rory McIlroy. “Two in a row. Hope he wins a third.”