Wigo was a four-year All-America collegiate water polo player and led his Stanford University team to two consecutive NCAA Championships in 1993 and 1994.

[2] At an early age, Wigo and his sister would travel to a community pool on the West Side in New York City and compete with the Gotham Aqua Kings, having been inspired to swim by his parents who were also swimmers.

[3] Wigo's college career was plagued by chronic back pain caused by degenerative discs, and he missed substantial parts of his sophomore and junior seasons at Stanford due to his condition.

His father, Bruce Wigo, is the former executive director of US Water Polo, and now CEO of the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Ft Lauderdale, Florida.

[7] Wolf Wigo's mother, Dawn Young, an actress and filmmaker in New York City,[11] made him the subject of a 2004 award-winning documentary, Beneath The Surface,[12] about his rise in the water polo world to compete in three Olympics.

In December 1998, Wigo was in his father's backyard pool trying to win a bet with his 12-year-old younger twin brothers Drac and Janson that he couldn't swim 20 laps underwater.

[14] For most of these four years he made trades for Cole Roesler Capital Management until 2:30pm, then went to either Stanford or across the bay to the University of California, Berkeley for his water polo workouts.

Every Friday, he would head from the trading floor to the airport, fly south to train with the US National Team all weekend and return home Sunday night.