Erin Pettersen '04 (photo courtesy of Whitman College)

College: Whitman College (Washington)
Year: Senior
Major: History
Lakeside Sports: Swimming and golf
Whitman Sport: Swimming

How I got started in swimming
I took swimming lessons as a baby, and never wanted to quit, so when I was five years old, I joined a year-round competitive team.

Successes
• Lakeside Swimming—I earned the fastest time of my life in the 100-yard butterfly while I was at Lakeside. The first time I competed in a dual-meet type competition was in high school; I did well with that new type of competition.
• Whitman Swimming—The 100-yard butterfly is the only thing that I haven’t improved in since I’ve been in college. My training is now geared more toward the 200 and I’ve been very successful with that.

Lakeside’s impact
Training in the morning at Lakeside in addition to the training I was doing in the afternoon for my club team doubled the amount of time I was spending in the pool. Having to do that throughout the season definitely improved my conditioning.

Favorite coach
Mike Babcock was a great coach. His coaching style included a lot of variety, which is something I think is necessary in swimming because it’s a sport that can get monotonous—your head is under water, you’re not talking to anyone, you’re going back and forth, and it’s early in the morning. Having a coach that incorporates variety in his training definitely makes practice not only more fun and interesting, it helps you build a variety of skills by working on starts, turns, strokes, and overall conditioning.

Staying motivated
The fact that I’ve gradually improved my whole life has helped to keep me motivated. I’ve never really had a plateau period. Many swimmers go through that, or peak when they’re 15 years old, and by the time they get to college, they’re burned out because they haven’t improved. At Lakeside, there were nights when I couldn’t go to practice because I had so much homework. In college, practice is required no matter what your homework is. So increasing my conditioning level and starting to lift weights in college have certainly helped me to continue improving every year.

Impact of sports on personal/academic life
Every single person on my swim team here agrees that we all do better in school during the swim season. It keeps you healthy and it’s a built-in study break. It also helps you organize your day better, because when you know you have to spend two and a half to three hours working out, your time management skills improve. It’s a lot easier to waste time when you have time!

Advice for current Lakeside students contemplating college athletics
If you can do it at Lakeside, you can do it at college. Being able to balance your activities with your homework is something that Lakeside teaches you how to do really well because you have so much work. We see a lot of freshmen on the swim team that end up quitting because they think it’s too much too handle.

Sports hero
I definitely admire my older sister, Piper ’03. She swam at Lakeside and then went on to swim at Amherst. Piper was just a year of ahead of me at Lakeside so we swam in many relays together and competed in lanes next to each other. But it’s never been an unhealthy competition—we’ve always been very supportive of each other. She had a phenomenal college career and that’s definitely something I admire.

Goals
My long-term goal for this season is to make nationals. I also want to have a positive impact on the team. I was captain last year, and as captain my senior year, I’d like to be able to leave with a legacy of being a positive influence and a very high-spirited teammate. That’s what’s really important to me. Swimming is hard work, requires a huge time commitment, and it can get monotonous. The extra activities you do outside of the pool are essential for the general happiness and success of everyone involved.