Sophia Swanson, who was to have signed a letter of intent to attend Marist College on a partial athletic scholarship Tuesday and swims the year round, with the high school’s girls team, the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter Hurricanes, and as a town lifeguard, said during an interview at The Star Friday that she cherished the friends she’s made and that she had not tired of looking at the Y pool’s black lines.
She had started swimming “because of lifeguarding. . . . My older sister, Isabella, who’s a sophomore at the University of Miami now, had been in the junior lifeguard program, and I’d always wanted to be better than her, so I said to my parents, ‘Me too! Me too!’ ” At the age of 8 she began junior lifeguarding and swimming with the Hurricanes.
She probably would have gotten an even earlier start had Haley Ryan’s Nippers program for 5-through-7-year-olds — a program she’s helped out with — been around then.
Swanson has been to the state meet four times, as a butterflier and freestyler, and soon she will have competed five times in the Y.M.C.A. nationals. The Old Montauk Athletic Club’s high school female athlete of the year has also helped build an elementary school in Nepal, “three hours by bus from Katmandu,” and has represented this country in an international lifesaving competition in Durban, South Africa. She’ll be in the national lifeguard tournament on South Padre Island in Texas this August, and she hopes to make the United States’ world lifesaving team again. The 2020 lifesaving world championships are to be held in September in Riccione, Italy.
As for the Nepal BuildOn trip, overseen by Bill Barbour, an East Hampton High School history teacher, “It was life-changing,” she said. Asked how so, she replied, “Everybody’s so happy with nothing — without all the things that we think are necessary, things that we take for granted.” She and her fellow Bonackers and the Nepali kids had communicated, and successfully, with hand signals. “The whole community built the school — they started it four months after we left.”
When this writer said she seemed to the water born, Swanson, who sometimes swims twice a day — before school on Tuesdays and Fridays and every day after school, agreed.
Tom Cohill of the Hurricanes had been her chief coach. “I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for Tom — he pushes me very, very, very much, but it’s good that he does. He’s always very positive, but he’s not easy on you. He knows you can do better — he makes you believe in yourself.”
She also works out periodically with Cohill at Ari Weller’s Philosofit studio near the Y, doing pull-ups, push-ups, swinging kettleballs . . . “a lot of strength training.”
Swanson added that John Ryan Jr., the head of the town’s guards, had also pushed her and had been there for her, as had Maggie Purcell, who swims at the University of Richmond now. “I grew up swimming with her — she’s one of my best friends, and one of my best competitors. She’s motivating.”
“Once you turn 14 you stop junior lifeguarding,” Swanson continued. “I became an actual lifeguard this past summer. I passed the cold water test in June and worked at Atlantic and on the bay because I was a rookie.”
“No saves,” she said in answer to a question, which was good news, but she was ready if called upon.
The butterfly, her favorite stroke — and an exceedingly demanding one — wasn’t the first you’d find girls raising their hands to do.
Learning the dolphin kick — Andrey Trigubovich, who lives now in Miami, and “a butterflier himself,” had taught her — was, Swanson said, the key.
When, as a freshman, Swanson’s right arm “got numb,” Sinead FitzGibbon, a physical therapist (and competitive rower, mountain-biker, long-distance swimmer, and long-distance runner), oversaw her rehabilitation. She hasn’t had a problem since.
Asked what she needed to improve on when it came to butterflying, Swanson said, “I sometimes rely on my kick more than I should — I feel I don’t move my arms fast enough.”
What first came to her mind when asked what she loved about swimming was “the team. Coming from such a small town and going to school with each other, we’re a really close team.”
It was one of her former Hurricane teammates, Ethan McCormac, who along with his parents had suggested she consider Marist, where he’s on the men’s swimming team. She’d met the women’s coach twice and committed on her final recruiting visit in late January.
Her love of kids has persuaded her to think of majoring in early childhood education. “I want to teach second grade, I think.”
When asked why, Swanson said, “Third and fourth graders are too old. . . . I don’t want to teach kindergartners and first graders because they’re too young. . . . Second is just right.”