California’s Tyler Messerschmidt Taking Semester Off From Golden Bears

BERKELEY, California, January 14. TODAY, California's Tyler Messerschmidt announced via Facebook that he is taking a semester off to focus on getting his grades up at a community college before making a return to Berkeley.

Messerschmidt is on his way home to Arizona, where he swam for the Westside Silverfins and represented Desert Edge high school in swimming.

Messerschmidt did some damage for the Golden Bears last year at NCAAs, placing eighth in the 100 free and ninth in the 50 free. He also helped California with some serious relay work, including both teams that won the 200 free relay and 400 medley relays. He definitely helped California in its title defense.

Grades will not post officially until today, with a decision on whether Messerschmidt has officially become academically ineligible or not until later this week. Based on information available to Swimming World, however, California has anticipated Messerschmidt making the move to focus on his academics this semester.

Messerschmidt's full post:

Tomorrow morning I leave Berkeley for home… I could have never thought I would have even been in this situation… I let my family, my team, my friends, and more importantly myself down… I will be coming home to AZ for about a year, swimming, working and going to community college to raise my GPA to return to my Bears in a year's time…

I realize what I need to do now… I'm so confident in my Bears this year and I'll be rooting for them every step of the way…

I am confident in myself that I return back to CAL and I can be back where I belong: Berkeley…

Nothing is worse than seeing the hurt in the eyes of your friends after telling them goodbye…

There was so much I learned from all of this and so much I wish I was able to understand sooner…

Family does not mean blood, and I have the best family I could ever ask for…

I will be back soon everyone, I'm ready to do this…

Game on.

Go Bears.

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