A breaststroke legacy

Swimming World and Junior Swimmer, Aug 1999 by Lydersen, Kari

When Kristen Woodring won her high school state championship in the 100 yard breaststroke her freshman year, she thought it was "soo big," she said. Little did she know that two years later, she would not only win the event again, but she would set the national high school record in doing so.

Kristen, representing Wilson High School of West Lawn, Pa., achieved that distinction at her district championships at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., when she clocked 1:00.74.

She would have been even more irprised back then to realize that she ould not even try to better the record jr senior year.

Instead, Kristen will graduate early am high school and will take some ne off from her studies to train in orida in preparation for the Olympic ials.

She's training this summer with hn Pontz, formerly her club coach at incaster Aquatics. She's living in an apartment with two other young Lancaster swimmers-junior national butterflyer Casey Coble and NAG record-holding breaststroker Kyle Salyards, whom she has been "kind of like dating" for about four years.

When Pontz told Woodring at senior nationals this winter that he had been offered a job at Patriot Aquatics just outside of Orlando, Woodring made the hard decision to spend as much pre-Olympic time training there as possible, even though she loves training and competing at Wilson with Coach Roy Snyder.

"I didn't want to switch coaches at this point," she said, calling Pontz one of the major keys to her recent success. "He really changed my life. Ever since I've been training with him (starting three years ago), I've been improving. He probably knows me better than my parents know me."

Woodring, 17, will return to her home in Reading, Pa., after competing on her first national team at the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg, Canada this summer. Then she will train with her high school team while taking double courses in order to graduate in January.

After that, it's back to Florida for eight months of solid long course training with Pontz before Trials. She'll return to Pennsylvania for graduation ceremonies with her class-something that is important to her.

"At first, I was really sad about leaving my friends and family, but this is a really great opportunity," she said.

Following in the Footsteps

Woodring's high school success is particularly interesting, considering that she is following directly in the footsteps of another Wilson breaststroke star, world champion and American record holder Kristy Kowal.

Woodring grew up watching Kowal swim breaststroke. Like Kowel, she started swimming at the Reading, Pa. YMCA. Her sister Angela was good friends with Kowal, and the two swam together on the Wilson High School team.

From fifth grade through eighth grade, Woodring served as the team's manager, watching Kowal win meet after meet with her smooth stroke, eventually setting the national high school record in the 100 yard breast her senior year at the district championships.

Kowal went on to college at the University of Georgia, where she set the U.S. Open and American record in the 100 yard breast with a 59.05 at NCAAs and won two golds and a silver at the World Championships last year.

The same year Kowal started school at Georgia, Woodring under Synder, Bob Bright and Helen Stevenson-the same coaches who had worked with Kowal.

And for good measure, the same year (1999) that Kowal was named NCAA Swimmer of the Year, Woodring was named High School Swimmer of the Year.

So it sems more than coincidence that on Feb. 27 Woodring broke Kowal's national high school record. In fact, she shattered the 11:01.47 record with her 1:00.74, a second-and-a-half improvement from her own best time.

She thinks Kowal's influence over the years, as well as her ongoing encouragement, were keys to her success.

"I always tried to imitate her when I was younger," said Woodring, who is four years younger than Kowal. "I knew that whatever she was doing, it was working. I would always watch her out of the pool, and she's so calm. She never gets nervous or anything. She's still my role model. When she won World Championships, Mrs. Kopwal brought the video down to practice, and we all got out of the pool and watched it. She just looked so good."

At the 1996 Olympic Trials, Kowal got third by less than a tenth of a second, landing her tearful face on a Swimming World cover. After World Championships, she was again on the cover-this time with a smile.

She said she also smiled when hearing of Woodring's record. "Records are meant to be broken," she said, adding that "it's kind of cool to think that I'd be someone's role model."

Like Kowal, Woodring trained with the Wilson team throughout the school year, a somewhat rare set-up among elite swimmers at public schools. But she only swam with Pontz in the summers and now and then in the mornings. Kowal actually never swam regularly with a club team and didn't even go to USS senior nationals until her senior year in high school.

"A lot of high schools don't really have hard practices like us," said Woodring. "Wilson is more like a club team."