Road to Paris: Far from home, Tongan Noelani Day prepares for second Olympics
The road to the Olympics takes swimmers from all over the world through the American college system. From far and wide, countries big and small, a litany of colleges can contribute to the 800 or so Olympic swimmers that’ll converge on Paris this summer. In the six months until that happens, we’re going to shine a light on the journeys of some of those swimmers in a new series of stories on The Road To Paris.
Life changed quickly for Noelani Day in the first half of 2021, even by the standards of a high schooler plotting her future.
Day graduated high school in December 2020 in her native Tonga. Her exploits in the water put her on a trajectory toward the Tokyo Olympics, a path that required leaving the islands for training facilities. A more lasting voyage away from home to attend college in the United States didn’t seem likely. But on a whim to fill downtime between workouts, she applied to three schools in the U.S. with few expectations.
Three years on from that inflection point, Day hasn’t returned to Tonga. But she’s become an Olympian, swam at a World Championships and is most of the way through her studies at USC, where she swims for the club team while vying for a second Olympics.
The first Olympic swimmer born and raised in Tonga, Day’s place in the history books is cemented. Her efforts to reach Paris are within the context of larger life goals, like her pursuit of a degree in physical therapy and the legacy of her accomplishments back home.
“I felt like when I went (to the Olympics), it wasn’t just me standing behind the blocks,” Day said. “It was my mom who stepped in as my coach, it was all the local swimmers back home – there’s a lot of people that contributed to getting me to where I am now. That was a very special thing to me.”
In uncharted waters
By necessity, Day didn’t grow up as a pool swimmer. Tonga is a collection of nearly 200 islands, 45 of them inhabited, in the South Pacific, cradled by the international dateline some 1,200 miles northwest of New Zealand and 2,000 miles off Australia’s east coast. With a population of 100,000 people, it lacks an Olympic size swimming pool. Much of Day’s early swimming came in the ocean, at coral-crusted coves or manmade features, like Touliki Navy Base’s boat docks or the abandoned harbor of Uafa ‘Amelika.
Photo Courtesy: Noelani Day
At age 8, she joined the island’s first swim club, established by Canadian expat Ella Mawdsley. The club would rent time at hotel pools; finding more traditional facilities required travel abroad, and Day earned scholarships to train at camps in Japan, China and Fiji. She prepared for the Tokyo Games with an intensive stay at Thanyapura Sports and Health Resort in Thailand.
“When I was training for Tokyo, that was the first real, six months that I had where I had continuous access to a pool and coaching,” she said. “So I was surprised with the amount of time I was able to drop in that short period.”
Day, who turns 21 this spring, achieved her big break at 14 as the youngest person to cross the Apolima Strait in Samoa, a swim of 22.3 kilometers. (An omen of her penchant for conquering obstacles, she finished despite a bout of dengue fever two weeks earlier and a mid-race shoulder injury.) Her open water achievements include the 5-kilometer Fiji Oceania Championships and Auckland Harbor Crossing. Showing her range at the 2019 Pacific Games, she placed in both the 5km and the 50 breaststroke.
Day fought a perplexing dichotomy at home. While a deep, spiritual bond with the ocean is intrinsically intertwined with Pacific islander culture, competitive swimming is not. Day faced dissuasion from conservative quarters on the island against female competition. In fighting through it, she hopes to blaze a path for others.
“For me, it’s so ingrained to my culture,” she said. “It was honestly just an escape from everything. Back home, we have the issue that we don’t see many women in sports. … It’s a space for me to do what I want to do and feel confident about it.”
Plotting a future
Day didn’t know college swimming was an option. Only late in her high school studies was a college education even a remote possibility.
Day aspires to be a physical therapist, as a way to contribute to her community. She applied for Tongan government scholarships but was rejected. With time to kill after graduating at the end of 2020, she googled top physical therapy programs in the U.S., fortuitously just before the application deadlines. She figured nothing would come of it, given the cost of living in the U.S. But with nothing better to do besides training, she submitted applications.
It set up a frenzied spring. In the span of a few weeks, while Day was in Thailand, she learned she’d qualified for the Olympics, then got accepted to the University of Hawaii and USC. Not until her financial aid paperwork came through was she sure her family could afford to send her to the States.
“I didn’t really understand what it meant to be accepted to a school like SC, but I was like, OK I’m probably not going to go,” she said. “And once my financial aid came through, everything worked out and I was like, I guess I’m moving to the States now.”
The flurry of activity begat another. In late July, she made her Olympic debut, finishing 63rd in the 50 free. With Tonga’s borders closed by pandemic travel restrictions, she went from Thailand to Tokyo to stay with family in Atlanta until the semester started in Los Angeles.
Much of Day’s journey has come with her mom, Vila Day, by her side, from the support kayak in Apolima to the deck back home. Qualifying for the Olympics meant Noelani got to see her mom, whom she talks to by phone daily, one more time before departing for the States, with Vila in Tokyo as her coach. The moment came at a cost to Vila, who spent more than two months waiting in New Zealand for a repatriation flight to Tonga post-Tokyo. But with family unable to travel to those COVID Games, Noelani and her mom got to share a unique experience even among her fellow competitors.
“It’s been so great,” she said. “… We’re really close because of swimming.”
The quest for Paris
Day has achieved her Olympic dream. With a familial sense of duty, she’s turning to another career.
She’s still working to qualify for the Paris Olympics, but it’s not with the singular focus of three years ago. She won’t swim at the 2024 World Championships in Doha, and she trails countrywoman Charissa Panuve in terms of FINA points to determine Tonga’s Universality spot. Day has swum at two World Championships total, in 2019 and 2023. She finished 69th in the 50 free and 58th in the 50 backstroke in Fukuoka last summer.
Her PT studies come first. She’s preparing for graduate school and is starting a job at a PT clinic. Given all the sacrifices others have made for her, she’s now in a position to provide for them.
Vila Day, left, and Noelani Day; Photo Courtesy: Noelani Day
Swimming is still a significant part of her life. The community of USC’s club team is vital, as is maintaining a routine of exercise and physical activity. She’s swum with the Trojans each of the last two years at the College Club National Championship meets.
“Just being in the water or being in the gym, wherever it is, as long as I’m moving and exercising, it’s something I need to keep incorporated in my daily routine,” she said. “It helps me stay sane, stay on top of things so that I feel good.”
Paris is a goal. But it doesn’t carry the make-or-break weight Tokyo did, reflecting the new stage of life she’s reached.
“I know that I still have quite a good shot because of my FINA point standings, but it’s not like Tokyo where it’s like, I’m all in,” she said. “Right now, I’m trying to find a balance between school. … I swim because it’s part of my routine and I love doing it. And if that is able to take me to Paris, then I’d be over the moon. But at the same time, it’s not something that I can necessarily devote 100 percent of my time to.”
Day’s goals are also broader than just another Olympic swim. She’s active in the Talitha Project, a non-government organization aimed at empowering young girls and women in Tonga. Sport has given her a platform and an instrument to help others find the fulfillment she has.
“One of the most joyful things for me is to have younger girls come up to me and be like, ‘oh I really like this and I want to compete, too,’” Day said. “That was very fulfilling, and it was a full circle moment because for so long, there were a lot of things that I had to go through that made me uncomfortable as a Pacifica woman in sport. But having younger girls come up to me and be like, ‘if you’re doing it, it can’t be that bad,’ then I know I’ve done my job because I don’t want girls to ever feel uncomfortable or like they don’t want to take part in sports because of cultural things.”