That is saying something, because the breaststroke events have historically been dominated by athletes almost a foot shorter than Whitley. In the men’s 200-meter breaststroke at the 2012 London Olympics, the average height of the eight finalists was a shade over 6 feet.

“I kind of enjoy looking at people giving me weird looks,” Whitley said. “I use it as motivation to get so fast it makes people freak out because I’m challenging their preconceptions.”

Whitley was speaking before an afternoon workout, in the office at the indoor 25-yard pool in the Graham Athletics Center on the William Penn Charter campus. In a few minutes he would begin a two-hour workout interrupted only by a quick trip a tapped-out Whitley made to the restroom to throw up.

Whitley shared a lane with two other swimmers, and during one set he alternated freestyle and breaststroke while chasing his two male teammates, who were swimming freestyle with fins.

When he banged arms with one of his teammates, Whitley stopped long enough to direct an icy stare at him. The expression on his face showed none of the affability that Whitley had radiated that morning in his chemistry lab, his Quaker class and an English lecture on “The Merchant of Venice.”

“Did you see him get snippy?” Coleman said with a laugh.

A Coach’s Story

Coleman has been working with Whitley since he was 11, long enough to be able to speed read his moods.

The story of how Coleman came to coach Whitley is entwined with the story of how she met Paul Coleman, the man who would become her husband. She was at the Middle Atlantic Junior Olympics in 2010, directing her swimmers in sprints in a crowded pool during a warm-up session restricted to participants 10 and younger, when she saw a boy on the blocks who looked like Gulliver among the Lilliputians.