Staying afloat
Though the new swimming and diving teams are not official Franklin sports, they feel like it.
“Technically we’re still a club team because we’re not sanctioned by the NCAA,” sophomore Amanda Wray said. “But we have been acting as a team, and the college has pretty much been treating us as a team.”
Though the college had discussed a swim team before she arrived last year, Wray said she began to explore the idea of a swim team last year with the athletic administration.
When the new Franklin Community High School was being built, athletic director Kerry Prather said the college inquired about using the middle school swimming pool.
The college originally explored just using the space for training. But Prather said it soon became clear Franklin could have enough access to start a team if it wanted to.
“Since the one impediment to having swimming - which was having a facility - was answered, we hired Kurt Hass, who coincidentally had just retired as the high school coach after a long and successful career to be a consultant and see if we could build a program.”
Hass, who coached Wray in the past, remains as a consultant with the team, and later Franklin hired current head swim coach Andy Hendricks.
Hendricks said Hass handles a lot of the administrative duties including recruiting for the team. He said more than 70 prospective athletes have talked with Hass about coming to Franklin.
Though it is not official, the goal is to have both men’s and women’s varsity swim teams as soon as next season.
"If they continue in the direction they appear to be heading, then I think that is possible,” Prather said.
Both men and women compete for Franklin at the club level and not just against other colleges. The wide variety of entrants in such events leads to some unique competition.
“One meet I was in a heat against a 72-year-old man, Wray said. “… I beat him; I didn’t come in first overall, though.”
Wray has swum some butterfly, breaststroke and freestyle events this season.
The team competed twice so far this season in meets at Ball State University and Indiana University.
For junior Drew Sparks, who swims the breaststroke, the team gave him the opportunity to get back into the pool after seven years away from competition. He said this year’s team will leave a special legacy.
“It’s nice to see that the whole program is getting started, and that we will actually be remembered as one of the first teams that we had,” he said.
Hendricks called the inaugural season successful.
“I think we successfully started what will become a Division III sport for the college,” he said.
Hendricks gave much of the credit of the first season’s success to the swimmers who recruited new members to the team just in the last few months.
Franklin would become the third HCAC program to field swimming and diving teams, which would mean it could become a conference sport.
The teams travel to Milford, Oh. Saturday for their final meet of the season.
