For the last century, the Michigan men's swimming program has been symbolized by star power.

Tyler Clary. Peter and Alex Vanderkaay. Tom Dolan. Eric Namesnik. Chris Thompson. The list goes on of ready-made superstars who came to Michigan and experienced outstanding success from the very beginning of their careers, including winning Olympic gold medals.

But this season, the symbol of the Wolverines isn’t a hotshot recruit who was projected as a future Olympian since middle school. Instead, it’s two lightly recruited walk-ons who are now the captains of one of the most storied swimming programs in the nation.

Seniors Chris Douville and Neal Kennedy each took different paths to their respective leadership roles. But they share a common bond of hard work and sacrifice.

No. 6 Michigan fields its youngest team ever this season, with 17 freshmen and just seven seniors. With that in mind, Douville and Kennedy’s ability to spread that type of work ethic onto the rest of the team will be the key to whether Michigan can overcome their unusual lack of superstars and achieve their usual level of success.

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Douville grew up in Dayton, Ohio as a huge Michigan fan, with his brother Nick swimming for the Wolverines from 2002-05. But coming out of high school, Chris wasn’t just too slow to receive a scholarship at Michigan as a freshman; he was too slow to even make the team. Instead, he attended Notre Dame for a year, delaying his dream.

“I had always wanted to go to Michigan,” Douville said last Thursday. “I improved enough in my freshman year at Notre Dame to qualify for Michigan, and once I got my release (from Notre Dame), the choice was easy.”

But Douville still had a long way to go once he arrived in Ann Arbor.

“When Chris got here, he wasn’t very good, truthfully,” Michigan coach Mike Bottom said. “I had no real expectations for him.”

But since then, Douville has improved exponentially each year. He’s gone from essentially being a reserve his sophomore season to being expected to score in several events at the Big Ten Championships this season.

“I never would have expected this, especially coming out of high school,” Douville said. “But the biggest key to my improvement, I think, is that when I got to Michigan, I looked at the best swimmers on the team, guys like Tyler Clary and Matt Patton, and I said to myself, ‘What can I do to get on their level?’ I try to keep that in mind through every single day, every single practice, and every single workout. I have to work harder than other guys who might be naturally faster than me.”

Unlike his co-captain, Neal Kennedy had his pick of virtually any university in the country coming out of high school. But he’s faced a lot of adversity in his college career as well. He hardly competed his freshman season and changed events over the course of his time in Ann Arbor. He went from specializing in the 400 individual medley to becoming one of Michigan’s fastest swimmers in the 200 individual medley.

But despite all of that, he grew substantially and won the team’s Most Improved Swimmer award last season. He's now considered one of the team’s best performers and says the key to such dramatic improvement is humility.

“Mike Bottom has forgotten more about swimming than I’ll ever know,” Kennedy said. “So I’ve always understood that I should listen to what the coaches say.”

After being named captain following last season, though, he experienced one of his greatest setbacks. A wakeboarding accident over the summer led to a nagging ankle injury that forced him to miss the season’s first two events, in which the Wolverines suffered a tie and a narrow loss. But he’s come back to swim at a high level since.

“(Neal’s injury) gave him some time to reflect on just how important swimming was to him,” Bottom said. “It’s like shaking up a coke can. He watched every meet go by and go by, and once he finally got his chance to swim, it popped.”

Douville and Kennedy are great friends now. But when they first met, they butted heads.

“We’re very different,” Kennedy said. “He’s the business guy who does all the hard work and just pounds it out every day. I’m a sprinter; I like to have fun, splash around, make jokes. He’s also more intellectual, whereas I’m more emotional.