CHS freshman Lydia Welty wakes up at 4:30 AM  because she has swimming practice from 5:30 AM to 6:45 AM everyday except Wednesdays and Sundays.

“I have my cereal before or my toast and then my mom drives me to practice and I swim there for over an hour,” Welty said. “Or if it’s a Tuesday morning or Friday morning I have dry land, so I lift weights, run and all that kind of stuff.”

After taking a shower at the pool she arrives at school at 7 AM and stays till 5 PM at which time her dad picks her up and drives her over to the pool again.

“[Stress] is extremely high, I mean I’ve had times where it feels like you’re going to break down, you just freak out” Welty said.

When Lydia finally gets home at night after a two hour long practice which occurs every evening except for Saturdays and Sundays, she still has school work to finish and a viola to play.

“How do I balance it all? I don’t know,” Welty said. “I mean you really have to do [your work], you can’t procrastinate. You have to do it when you have time. And I’m not perfect at that, I even have times when I just sit and watch TV but you just learn, you use every minute you have, and that’s pretty much it.”

Lydia’s not working hard for nothing. She has her sights set on swimming in the 2016 Summer Olympics.

“[Swimming] has never been as important to me as it is now,” Welty said. “It used to be just something fun to do.”

When Lydia was young, she enjoyed a variety of other sports such as gymnastics and sailing. When she moved from Minnesota to St. Louis during her 4th grade year she joined the CSP, a private USA swimming club previously affiliated with Clayton Shaw Park. The club provides swimming for all levels of swimmers throughout St. Louis and it was there, during her 7th grade year, that Lydia became passionate about swimming.

“From then on I started going to practice,” Welty said , “I just started getting serious and I started really dedicating myself and when it began paying off, I started winning events, I started making it to top eight, making it to finals and when I started doing that I realized how much fun and how much I really liked to do it.”

By attending all 10 practices each week as well as participating in meets, Lydia has worked her way up the hierarchy of the CSP club team from beginner to elite. Elite being kids over 13 who are Triple A qualifiers.

“It used to be, I could barely swim a stroke, and now it’s so weird to think that if you’d asked me if I thought that I’d be here going to junior nationals and to sectionals, making it to finals, if you told me a few years ago that I’d be making it there I’d be like, what’s sectionals? I’d have no idea. So it’s been crazy,” she said.

Recently, Lydia went to Junior Nationals in Knoxville, Tennessee. She was one of only four swimmers on her team to go.
“And this is like a huge deal, I mean junior nationals are the 18 and under, but these are like the best of the best. These are also really hard qualifying times in order to get there. I swam as part of a relay and we ended up breaking our team record,” Welty said. “But I’m just proud that I made it there with my friends and I mean I’m just proud that I’ve been able to fully commit myself to swimming.”
But Lydia also owes a lot of her success to her swim coach, Dave McCrary.
“He’s a big part, I mean you need a coach that you respect and that you want to do well for I mean they pretty much, they hold your career in their hands,” Welty said. “Dave’s my ideal coach, he’s stern, he’s funny but he also pushes you and if you didn’t have someone pushing you, well, I’d just have myself and I’d just be so slow. He’s great and I couldn’t ask for a better coach.”
McCrary has definitely gained Lydia’s respect, but what does her coach think of her hard work?

“Well Lydia’s been in our [elite] group for about a year now she’s made terrific strides in terms of her swimming,” McCrary said. “To be short with it I think she’s got tremendous potential as she continues to work hard and grow as an athlete.”

Of course consideration must be paid to Lydia’s youth and later timing in entering the sport.
“I think she’s a little bit green, she came into the sport a little bit later. She’s learning how to train well as a swimmer, believe it or not that takes a little bit of work to figure out how to train and train at a high level,” McCrary said. “In my group she’s on the younger end, 13 is where we start so she started in the group when she was 13 and she only just turned 15 so she’s only been at it for about a year. But she’s very young she’s got her whole career ahead of her.”
As much as Lydia wants to take time to swim for CHS, she and her coach believe that the more relaxed regimen could deter her from achieving her goals.
“My coach, he’s seen swimmers who swim for the high school teams and then when its time to come back to our team after the three months their level, and their ability and stamina have been lowered,” Welty said. “Because on the high school team it is not as intense, like the workouts aren’t as intense, and maybe not as focused as our club team.”
McCrary believes that choosing to swim Clayton is ultimately Lydia’s own decision and whether she wants to risk the chance to swim Olympics for the opportunity to better her school and community is a burden similar to what many athletes must carry.

“She is making choices to make herself better in the long run,” he said. “I think there are events that she’s good at that are unfortunately not a part of the high school program. That’s where she sees a little bit of an issue with training for college and Olympic trials and nationals and all these other huge events. I don’t think she makes the decision to not swim high school lightly, she’s thought about herself and what’s important and I know there’s parts of her, knowing Lydia, that wishes she could participate and could be a part of her high school because she loves being at Clayton High School and enjoys her friends. And she misses a part of that but that’s some of the decisions that athletes have to make sometimes.”

Lydia believes that her coach doesn’t recommend swimming for CHS because he is concerned with harming her ability to continue on improving.

“I have friends who are on CSP who do swim for CHS and they say that it’s just a great experience, that you get to become so close to your teammates,” Welty said, “that’s why I’d love to do that because I love swimming and sharing that with people at school and being a part of another team would be so much fun and I would really love to be a part of that and compete at state.”

But the future will always be open if Lydia decides to ever take on the blue and orange of CHS.
“My goal is to be a collegiate swimmer, I want to swim in college but I hope that I’m able to stay on top of everything so that I can continue getting good grades,” Welty said. “I want to get a scholarship to a school so I can swim there and I want to be able to continue on, juggling everything.”
If forced to choose between academic success and swimming, Lydia said, “I’d choose swimming. Of course academics are very important but swimming is my passion and I don’t want to do anything else. I mean I think it keeps me balanced it keeps me whole, being able to do a bit of everything that I really like to do.”

Lydia’s story is really one of modern success. Everyone who’s at the top started on the bottom, and just like Lydia, we can all achieve our olympic dreams through passion, love of what we do, and a little bit of elbow grease.

“I think the sky’s the limit for her, you know?” McCrary said. “I think she can definitely qualify for the Olympic trials and I think she’ll definitely swim in college probably for a very good school. So I think the limit is going to be what she puts to herself. If she trains hard, and she has passion for the sport which she has right now, she’s going to grow and continue to improve.”