Swim team, Celina Record

Celina teen is in the swim of things Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com Jan 27, 2016 Berlin Clemens gets kind of lonely sometimes. Strangely enough, it usually occurs when she is at swim meets surrounded by hundreds of her fellow high school athletes. There is a moment shortly after the crowd finishes singing the National Anthem, she said, when “everyone does their school cheer, their swim-team cheer.” As the sole member of Celina High School’s swim team, 16-year-old Clemens said her school’s cheering section is usually comprised of herself and her history teacher/swim team advisor Ellyn Hewett. “Me and Ms. Hewett are just sitting in the stands (yelling), ‘Go, Celina!’” Clemens said. Last weekend, the teen traveled to Austin College in Sherman to compete in the District 10-5A championships. She placed second in the 100-meter breaststroke category, and fourth in the individual medley category which included 50 meters each of the butterfly, freestyle, back- and breaststrokes. Clemens will advance to the Region 3-5A Championships Friday and Saturday at the Frisco ISD Natatorium. From there, she may move on to the Swimming and Diving State Meet, scheduled for Feb. 19-20 at the Texas Swim Center in Austin. This is the third year Clemens has served as Celina’s team, yet she said her accomplishments go largely unnoticed by her schoolmates. “People will say to me, ‘Wait, there’s a swim team here?’ That’s a little frustrating,” she said. “I’ve been in a pep rally before. I’ve done other things to show that I am on the swim team, and people are still like, `Really?’” The fact that the swim team doesn’t garner the same sort of attention as other athletic teams at the school isn’t lost on Clemens. Nor does she let it dampen her spirits. “I feel kind of special sometimes, because I’m sitting there and I’m like, `Yeah, I’m representing Celina. I’m the only one here,’ and I think that’s kind of cool,” she said. “I am the team and I’m the only one, and it makes me feel special, I guess.” Landing a spot on the team was surprisingly difficult, she said. Clemens began swimming when she was a toddler, and took up competitive swimming at age 8 – the same age her father began swimming competitively when he was a child. “It’s a family thing,” she explained. She joined an amateur swim team and competed with them for two years before switching to Texas Ford Aquatics, a year-round competitive team in Frisco for which she still swims competitively. When Clemens was in eighth grade, her mother inquired about how to get the teen onto Celina High School’s swim team beginning in her freshman year. “We were contacting the athletic department seeing if I could swim on behalf of the school, and the person in charge at the time was persistent that it wasn’t going to happen,” the teen recalled. Finally, she was put in touch with Hewett, who has served as the team’s advisor for nine years. For five of those years, the team had at least one member; during the other four, there were none. Because there are no public aquatic facilities in Celina, rules dictate that swimmers must log practice time on their own in order to participate on the school’s team. “We have to know you’re practicing,” Hewett said. “I do think we could have a (larger) team if we could have a pool (in the city), but that’s a long way off.” Because UIL does not have a 4A division in swimming, Celina High School’s team has no choice but to compete against much larger teams from 5A schools. It’s a challenge also faced by other high schools across the state with small student populations. Clemens, who also runs on Celina’s cross country and track teams, practices swimming up to six days per week at the Craig Ranch Community Association pool in McKinney. The two-hour practices are often followed by additional “dryland” exercises to help strengthen core and leg muscles. Hewett said Clemens’ reputation as a tough competitor often precedes her at swim meets. “We have one swimmer, and we have other schools look to see if we’re on the list because (they’ll say), ‘If she’s coming, then we’re not going to swim.’” Although she once had dreams of someday competing in the Olympics, Clemens said that is no longer her goal. “I feel like that’s a lot of pressure, and seeing how swimming already is a big part of my life, that would be dedicating so much more time,” she said. “These Olympians practice all day, and I can’t imagine doing that. I want to be able to experience other things.” Nevertheless, she is looking at colleges where she could potentially join a swim team, which Hewett has encouraged her to do. “That’s something we’ve talked about,” the teacher said, “because if she swam in college, they’d actually have a full team, which would be nice.”