How Sarah Kate Became a State Record Holder, Part 2

This post is the second in a two-part series. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to read Part 1 here.

Nine members of the St. Michael Catholic swim team qualified for state, which was held on Friday, November 30 and Saturday, December 1 in the Martin Aquatics Center at Auburn University, and I drove up on Friday to watch the team. Although I went to Auburn, the aquatics center opened the year after I graduated, so I had never been inside it. The Mayberry pool it ain’t, and it was even nicer than the Augusta Aquatics Center we’d visited several weeks earlier.

State Meet Day One: Prelims

Nathan and Mr. Andi didn’t come until Saturday, so on Friday night I felt like all of those videos of Michael Phelps’s mom that we saw during the Olympics – nervous up in the bleachers looking down at the pool in this enormous, impressive venue. I’ve been at the end of the lane, or somewhere along the side of the pool, at every meet since 2010 so to only be able to text and wave at her from one story up was a little unnerving.

Sarah Kate’s former high school team is large with a lot of good swimmers and their spectators were seated not far away. Sarah Kate knows a lot of their swimmers and I know a lot of the parents – some of them have been watching her swim since that first summer when she took twice as long to go half the distance. Several of them chatted with me about how great they thought it was that Sarah Kate could compete – the state’s first ever state meet para-swimmer was in 2017, and many of them expressed that at the time they thought “Sarah Kate can do this!” – and told me they would be cheering for her when her time came.

Her first event was the 50 yard freestyle and she had decided to attempt a diving start – the US Paralympics coaches had really stressed it during camp – but I didn’t think it was a good idea. I’m sure that down the road it’ll be faster, but she had not had many opportunities to work on it since Augusta and I didn’t think she was ready.

As it turned out, I was right. When the buzzer sounded, she hesitated before diving forward, and she also didn’t get a good angle into the water (it probably didn’t help that they do flyover starts at this meet so she was likely afraid she would kick the swimmer still in the water).

She sank like a rock – it wasn’t pretty. She finished the 50 free in a disappointing 50.43 seconds – nowhere near the time she would need to medal.

The 100 yard breaststroke was a different story. She set a new personal best, swimming it in 2:21.93, well under the time needed to medal. As long as she swam legally on Saturday she would make it onto the podium, but she wanted two medals, not just one.

State Meet Day Two: Finals

Finals didn’t start until 2:00 in the afternoon, so I had the morning to myself to relax and reflect on the previous day’s events. I was staying about 40 minutes from the aquatics center, and on the drive into Auburn I started thinking a lot about my dad, who died back in January. He was a high school principal for fifteen years and many of the memories of my childhood involve going to football games, basketball games, playoffs, and even one girl’s volleyball state championship.

I think I cried most of the way into Auburn. He was always so proud of Sarah Kate and had been to previous swim meets, road races, plays, and all the rest. Having her swim at the state meet was a moment he would have loved so much – I couldn’t believe he was missing it.

Once again, Sarah Kate’s first event was the 50 yard freestyle, but this time she chose a water start and no one was in the pool with her. The time she needed to medal was 48:07; her previous best was 47.05, but, as I shared above, her prelim time was 50.43.

Her start was good and she looked fast in the first half – so fast, in fact, that I was concerned she would run out of steam before the finish.

She touched the wall in 21-ish seconds, which was good, but her turn is very slow. She was in good shape, but I wasn’t taking anything for granted – she had to keep up that pace if she was going to have a shot at a medal. I was over-the-top yelling, as is my custom, and the Mayberry crowd was true to their word, cheering on their former Pirate.

When she had about ten yards left to go, I checked the clock, and I wasn’t the only one – her Cardinal coaches, teammates and a few Pirates were checking the clock, as well.

She hit the wall and looked up at the clock (and I swear to you, it was just like you see at the Olympics…)

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. 

She had beaten the medal time by more than two seconds, set a new personal best, and was now exactly two seconds away from a Can-Am qualifying time in the 50 free – a time that had seemed unreachable just a few weeks earlier (and make no mistake, it’s not quite within reach yet, but it’s at least on the horizon now).

You can watch the whole thing unfold, hear my obnoxious cheering, and witness me completing losing my mind in the video below (or you can just move along…)

A short time later, Sarah Kate was on the medal stand in first place (assisted by her teammate Vanessa because she forgot her arm crutches at the hotel!) She was the only para-swimmer at the meet, as the girl from 2017 had graduated, but she wasn’t the only para-swimmer with a desire to compete in that venue.

Throughout the weekend, other coaches and swimmers approached Sarah Kate, wanting to know what she did to be able to compete – all of them had para-swimmers on their own teams that they hoped to see at the state meet in the future. We hope to see that, too. We want Sarah Kate to have some competition, yes, but we also want the spectators who aren’t familiar with para-swimming to recognize them as athletes first, not just inspirations.

For the 100 yard breaststroke final, all she really had to do was swim a legal race. In my excitement/apprehension/exhaustion, though, I didn’t hear the buzzer and for a couple of seconds my heart raced, fearing she had false-started – you can actually hear me exclaim, “Oh!” in the video.

The race itself was a bit anti-climactic relative to the 50 free, but I’ve watched the video over and over because of the crowd reaction. After she completed the first length of the pool, someone started a chant of “Go!” each time she surfaced, and by the final length lots of people had joined in. I don’t know who started it, but I think it may have been a group of her former teammates who were gathered with her own team to watch.

In the end, she beat the qualifying time by more than 30 seconds.

The 50 free was her biggest triumph, but the 100 breaststroke was where she made history.  As the first para-athlete in state history to swim the breaststroke, she now holds the state record. In addition, she also will go down as the very first state record holder in St. Michael Catholic school history. (While I’m in a braggy mood, I want to also share that six of the nine St. Michael swimmers – four boys and two girls – won first place medals, making them the first state champions in school history, and the boys team finished second overall – not bad for a small school that just opened its doors in 2016).

When we signed Sarah Kate up for swim team way back in that summer of 2010 I could never have dreamed where swimming would take her (and us), but the really crazy thing is how much further she may go.

In 2019, she will compete on a national level, and her long-term goal is to make the US Paralympic Team. Some colleges have para-swimmers on their rosters – since 2012, Loyola University Maryland has had five members of the US Paralympic Team, including McKenzie Coan and Cortney Jordan.

Could Sarah Kate possibly one day swim at the aquatics center at Auburn University, not as a high school student, but as an Auburn Tiger? We don’t know. It seems far-fetched.

But she’s dreaming big.