Caleb Swanigan
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Swanigan in the 2015 McDonald's All-America game
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| No. 50 – Purdue Boilermakers | |
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| Position | Power forward |
| League | Big Ten Conference |
| Personal information | |
| Born |
April 18, 1997 Indianapolis, Indiana |
| Nationality | American |
| Listed height | 6 ft 9 in (2.06 m) |
| Listed weight | 250 lb (113 kg) |
| Career information | |
| High school | Homestead (Fort Wayne, Indiana) |
| College | Purdue (2015–present) |
| Career highlights and awards | |
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Medals
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Caleb Swanigan (born April 18, 1997) is an American college basketball player for the Purdue Boilermakers. He was ranked among the top prep players in the national class of 2015 by Rivals.com, Scout.com and ESPN. He completed his senior season for Homestead High School in the 2014–15 academic year.
In a 2017 story, ESPN writer Myron Medcalf noted that Swanigan went through a very difficult childhood:
Throughout his youth, he floated between unstable housing situations and homeless shelters, back and forth between Indianapolis and Utah, as his mother, Tanya, tried to stabilize her life with six children, all while his father, Carl Swanigan Sr., wrestled with a crack-cocaine addiction.
Swanigan inherited two key features from his biological father—height and a tendency to obesity. The elder Swanigan, who died in 2014 from complications of diabetes, was 6'8" (2.03 m) and weighed nearly 500 pounds (230 kg) at his death. By the time Swanigan was entering eighth grade, he was 6'2" (1.88 m) and neared 400 pounds (180 kg). His weight issues, according to Medcalf, were also a symptom of his unstable home situation. His father had many brushes with the law, battled drug addiction for most of his adult life, and physically assaulted his wife. According to a story in Bleacher Report, he was accidentally dropped by his mother as an infant, leaving a bruise on his face; this incident led her to move with her children to Salt Lake City. For the next decade, the family bounced between Indianapolis and Utah; he recalled that he lived in five different homeless shelters and attended 13 different schools by the time he was 13.
When his mother decided to move the family to Houston, his older brother Carl Jr., concerned that Caleb would keep gaining weight if he moved with his mother, called his former AAU basketball coach, Roosevelt Barnes, a former three-sport star at Purdue who played on the school's 1980 Final Four team and now a successful sports agent. Barnes, living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, agreed to take Caleb in if he could adopt him and raise him as his own son. Barnes addressed Swanigan's eating habits and, after receiving clearance from a cardiologist, began putting him through workouts similar to those Barnes himself went through in college. By the time Swanigan finished high school, he had slimmed down to 260 pounds (120 kg).
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