Nevzat Arda Agir, an open-water swimmer, swim team captain and American Red Cross and Nassau County-certified lifeguard, has spent much of his life in the water. He started swimming when he was 6, in his home country of Turkey. Now, the 17-year-old Locust Valley High School student has his sights set on more open-water swims and faster times in the pool.
Though Agir also played basketball and soccer when he was growing up, swimming became his favorite sport. He said that he wasn’t as talented in other sports, and sometimes lacked motivation.
“When I go swimming, I like it,” he said. “I’m having so much fun, and I want to go swimming all day. All day, every day.”
Along with his parents and sister, Agir emigrated to the United States in 2023, after an earthquake struck Turkey that February. They had other family members living in the United States, and would visit often.
Agir said that swimming played a big role in his adjustment to a new country, helping him make friends and get used to life in the U.S. “Now everyone knows his name,” his father, Meric Agir, said.
Though he had swum on a team in Turkey, Arda said it was much different from swimming in the U.S. Here, where he swims for Locust Valley High School, the Long Island Express and the St. Dominic’s Bayhawks, a Catholic Youth Organization team, there are evening practices, more competitions and support from the school district.
Agir pointed to the Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swim, a roughly 4-mile swim between Europe and Asia off the coast of Istanbul, as the event that ignited his love for open-water swimming. Last year he completed the grueling 20 Bridges Manhattan Island Swim, a 28.5-mile circumnavigation of Manhattan, in eight hours and 23 minutes. At 16, he became the youngest native of Turkey to finish the swim.
While he competes for three teams, Agir said, he prefers the open-water environment to swimming in a pool. “I don’t have any limits,” he said. “I’m free in open water.”
The 20 Bridges swim is one of the events in the marathon challenge Triple Crown of Open-Water swimming. After completing it, Agir began making plans to tackle the other two legs, the Catalina Channel and English Channel swims.
He planned to swim the Catalina Channel on Tuesday, and trained for hours at a time in open water at night to prepare. The Catalina swim, an individual effort in the Pacific Ocean from Santa Catalina Island to the Southern California mainland, is roughly 20 miles long, and many swimmers take on the challenge at night to avoid high winds.
Agir dedicated the swim to raising awareness for endometriosis and promoted his effort on social media. He chose the cause, he said, because his father is an obstetrician-gynecologist, and because endometriosis —a chronic condition in which tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside the uterus— remains a condition many people don’t know a lot about.
His father told him it was a cause he could swim for. “It sounded really [interesting],” Agir said, “and people don’t know about this disease, really.”
On Tuesday, high winds created rough conditions, and both son and father developed motion sickness on the boat that took them to the swim’s start point. Agir jumped in the water and attempted the swim anyway, but was advised to stop after two hours. His father said that he was determined to continue, and it was disappointing that he couldn’t finish the swim.
Agir said he would like to give the Catalina Channel another try in the future, but for now he plans to focus on the pool in his senior year at Locust Valley, aiming to swim the 100-yard butterfly in 54 seconds and the 100-yard breaststroke in 1 minute, 3 seconds — times that would attract the attention of a number of college swimming coaches.
Kristen Turnow, superintendent of the Locust Valley school district, described Agir’s accomplishments as “astonishing” in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the school community is fortunate to have “such an inspiring student walking our halls.”
“We are all excited to see him continue his pursuit of the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming,” Turnow wrote, “and proudly represent the Falcons’ varsity swim team this year.”
While he has not yet chosen a college or an area of study, Agir said he is exploring schools, and plans to continue swimming.
His father said that it can be scary watching Arda attempt difficult open-water swims, but he is proud of him. “I just really try to support him,” he said.
