Though he rarely spoke English, German swimmer Cedric Buessing became an expert communicator upon arriving at UIndy.
He often used hand gestures, giving thumbs up or thumbs down on drills, miming specific movements.
He also wrote.
During Buessing's freshman year, UIndy's head coach, Brent Noble, remembers asking Buessing a question about his body position in the water. Buessing didn't have a lot to say, and Noble moved on from the interaction, not thinking about it much more.
The next morning, Noble found a note slipped under his office door. Buessing had written pages of all his cues and drills pertaining to his body positioning.
Another time, while the team was waiting for a flight, Noble asked Buessing about how he prepared for big meets in the past.
"It was really just a casual comment," Noble said.
When the flight landed, an email popped into Noble's inbox. Buessing had spent the whole flight translating two months of workouts for his coach.
"It showed me that he was very, very engaged, even though he wasn't talking that much," Noble said.
"In our world, Cedric is really special. But he doesn't act like it," Noble added.
It's qualities like this — intentionality, work ethic and talent — that have etched Buessing into UIndy's record books in eight events, earned him three-time Great Lakes Valley Conference Swimmer of the Year honors and brought him 17 first-team All-America awards.
His accolades transcend the collegiate level, too. The German swimmer is also believed to be the first NCAA Division II swimmer to make an Olympic final. He placed eighth in the 2024 Paris Olympics in the 400-meter individual medley for Germany.
"I think my student-athlete experience at UIndy prepared me for the Olympics in a way of feeling the trust and the confidence of my friends and the family I've made around me," Buessing said. "That's probably what pushed me. I knew whatever was going to happen, they would have my back."
The support from a close-knit group was one of the reasons Buessing chose UIndy.
"I chose UIndy because of the friends I made during the first phone call. The coaches I've talked to, they became family," Buessing said.
Once at UIndy, the international student-athlete found a home in Indianapolis.
"We live together, we eat together, we swim together, we go to class. We're like a family. We're always together. In our cafeteria, we have this table. It's like our dinner kitchen table," he said.
From Noble's perspective, Buessing played a major role in the positive dynamic on the UIndy swimming and diving team.
"Cedric's good to people. People around Cedric feel safe. They feel empowered to be themselves," he said.
The brotherhood Buessing found at UIndy only increased when his younger brother, Silas, joined him at the school.
"We've been pushing each other," Buessing said. "Whatever practice we were doing, whoever would have more energy afterward would feel like a loser at that point. So, yeah, it's definitely been motivating. It's been fun."
Being an NCAA student-athlete allowed the Buessing brothers to pursue swimming while getting an education. Cedric Buessing was a three-time College Sports Communicators Academic All-American and won Division II Team Member of the Year honors for swimming and diving in 2025.
"The whole college and sports system is just a lot more interconnected than it would be in my home country, in Germany," Buessing said.
College in the U.S. also provided him the chance to learn English quickly. What started as hand gestures and written translations evolved into an ease of speaking in his second language.
Buessing graduated from UIndy in May with a degree in business administration and management and a minor in accounting. In the future, he plans to use his degree to become an accountant. He also plans to return to Germany to pursue another Olympic cycle.
Reflecting upon his career, Buessing said he would pick UIndy over again if he could.
"My experience at UIndy has been really great. … If I had another fifth year, I would stay another fifth year," he said.
For Buessing, choosing UIndy and Division II meant preparing himself for greatness, whether it be for a national championship or on the Olympic stage. For Noble, having a talent like Buessing in his program demonstrated the upside of choosing Division II.
"We have someone like Cedric who could be anywhere, and he would choose to come here again because of the level of experience he has had within Division II," Noble said.
