Riptide Swim Team ’22
Arizona State University ’26
While we were suffering one of the snowiest winters in recent Minnesota history, Katherine was experiencing her freshman year in Tempe at Arizona State University. Like many kids who decide to swim in college, Katherine just couldn’t imagine not doing it. She’s been a part of swimming most of her life and loves the sport. She also had several club swimming friends that were older go through the process and heard positive stories about their experience. In talking with Katherine, it definitely seems like she made the right choice!
At Arizona State, the training and workouts are like what she experienced at Riptide. She felt like there wasn’t too much of a difference in yardage or intensity, but it still is a lot of time in pool. That’s just fine with Katherine because most of her social circle comes from those same teammates. She does hang out with non-swimmers from time to time to get a little break, but she seems to be having plenty of fun with those she shares the pool with. Arizona State holds joint men’s and women’s practice for most of the week and has a couple practices per week that are separate. Both are great, but Katherine loves the energy of the joined practices and being the only girl in the distance lane.
Like many swimmers, when it comes to balancing school and swimming, she uses the time management skills that she has developed over her years of swimming to help and still finds time to do plenty out of the pool. Being in Tempe, the team doesn’t take a training trip, so she spent most of the holidays on campus with her team. It was a little challenging not to be able to spend all that time home with her family, but her swim family helped her through.
Advice for athletes thinking about swimming in college: Think about if you really love swimming or not and make sure you love the school. Coaches and teammates can come and go.
Advice for soon-to-be Freshman swimming in college: Enjoy it and enjoy meeting new people and it really helps if you come into your first college season in shape. It makes the transition easier.