Taylor Williams, one of the most explosive and successful swimmers on the BSM girls’ swim team, is only a freshman. In many respects, Taylor takes a high school sport more seriously than most others. She devotes over sixteen hours a week and over 2 hours a day to her training. With so much time spent in the pool and the weight room, Williams balances the demands of training like an elite athlete with the rigors of being a high school freshman.

While swimming is a one-season sport for most high school athletes, it is a year round sport for Williams. She transitions from the BSM swim team during the fall immediately to Aquajets, her club swim team, for the rest of the year. Aquajets is a rigorous, year-round swim program that develops swimmers to perform at the highest level, and many are often recruited to swim at Division I schools.

Williams consistently does swim workouts that challenge her physically and mentally. “One workout is the cumberland. A 500 free, 400 IM, 300 back, 200 breast, and 100 fly, and if you do something illegal, you have to redo it,” Williams said. This workout is challenging because it demands high intensity, sprint efforts for over 20 minutes with no rest, all while switching between four strokes: freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, and breastroke.

Although Williams has been swimming for her entire life, this is her first year swimming for BSM. Both Aquajets and the BSM swim team offer different experiences for their athletes. “It has been much more of a team experience, a team sport mainly because [club swimming] does want to make it a team, but they are very focused on the individual. In high school, you are working more for a place and points for the team,” Williams said.

As only a freshman, Williams already has her sights set on big goals this high school season. She wants to place at the state meet. “If I do the 100 free, it would be a 50 [seconds],” Williams said. A 50 second 100 freestyle is almost 5 seconds faster than the time needed to qualify for the state meet.  

Williams has found her success with the guidance of some trusted coaches and family members.  Williams’ mom is a dryland coach and her sister Morgan is a varsity swimmer and captain of the BSM girls’ team.

There is one thing certain in the near future of BSM swimming: they have a young, dedicated, and gifted swimmer in their ranks who will help lead them in the coming years to strong team performances. Williams’ early success is a testament to the challenging and taxing training regimen that she endures almost every day. It is not luck; rather, it is a culmination of the years of devotion and thousands of hours in the pool.