atherine Brown ’23 said she didn’t even want to join the swim team her parents registered her for when she was a child. “My parents signed me up for the summer swim team when I was nine, and I really didn’t want to do it,” she said. “I thought people looked stupid with swim caps on, but I ended up falling in love with it.” If the sport of swimming had karmic power, it spent the next decade or so paying back Brown for her initial reluctance. She swam three years at Abington High School outside Philadelphia with a tear in her shoulder. Later, she was the recipient of a pair of concussions at Lycoming when she was kicked by another swimmer in her lane during practice. During her freshman year at Lycoming, Brown had just recovered from her shoulder surgery and that led to improved times, as she finished second at the MAC Championship in the 100yard breaststroke in 1:06.14. “I was lucky that the 100-yard breaststroke was a few days into the meet,” she said. “I had gotten used to what the pool feels like and I got to watch a few finals, so I knew what to expect. I was really excited, and I felt cool because I was just a freshman walking around with a silver medal.” That was her last race of the year, though, as she was injured the next day during warmups and was removed from the 200-yard breaststroke. Less than a month later, the pandemic started. By mid-sophomore year, as COVID regulations dictated life on college campuses, there were signs that Brown could be a special Lycoming swimmer — the type of swimmer that could win conference championships. She was unhappy, though, and in the last week of March, she went back to her home in Glenside, Pa. “The announcement of the first half of the season being cancelled came on my birthday in July,” Brown said. “It just seemed to be foreshadowing something. I remember feeling nothing was going right. We went to virtual learning in our dorms. I wasn’t happy, so I decided to leave.” She finished her semester virtually and took the time to reflect on what she wanted to do next. Was swimming worth it? Should she transfer? Was it going to get better? “I strongly considered not coming back,” she said. “I didn’t really tell anyone that because I didn’t want anyone else’s input. It was a decision I needed to make myself. But I started to feel like my time at Lycoming wasn’t done.” When Brown returned for the start of the 2021-22 academic year, she came back focused on two things — doing well in the classroom and becoming the best swimmer she could. In the third meet of the year at Stevenson, she posted the conference’s top time of the year in three events. On Nov. 13, she broke the pool record in the 100-yard breaststroke with a 1:06.48, the first of two times she did that this year. “It was exciting because my goggles came off at the start and I couldn’t see anything,” she said. “My teammates were standing at the wall and they knew my goggles were off, so they tried to be big with their expressions so I had something to see.” EMER K THE 18 LYCOMING COLLEGE 2022 SPRING MAGAZINE
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