THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 29, 1996 TAG: 9602270124
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 22 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VICKI L. FRIEDMAN, COMPASS SPORTS EDITOR
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines
EVEN WHEN Kelley Harkins relaxes, she's busy.
Busy relaxing?
No, busy swimming. The Lake Taylor senior is knee-deep in school activities, clubs and a couple of jobs and to keep herself sane, she turns to the pool. Only she's far from serene there either.
Her mind is always spinning, even doing mental mathematics while measuring the distance she is swimming. ``I'll calculate things like, `This is eight 25s, that means four 50s, that's two 100s, and I have this much left to go.' ''
Sometimes she's not so businesslike, so she sings. Really. While she's swimming.
``I'm in chamber singers. I'm not a really good singer, but I like to sing,'' she says, boasting a repertoire that ranges from Barney sing-alongs to whatever is playing on the radio. ``I swim aloud sometimes.''
The high school swim season ended last week with the state's first-ever regional meet, where Harkins scored all of Lake Taylor's individual points with an eighth-place finish in the 500-meter freestyle and a 10th-place in the 200 individual medley.
But swim season is far from over for Harkins, who went unbeaten in the Eastern District this season while at one time or another swimming every event except the 100 freestyle. An ODAC swimmer, she's keying on next weekend's championship meet where she's vying to make ``senior champ'' cuts in three events. Senior champs is the equivalent of Junior Olympics for older swimmers and one classification away from nationals - the elite category. After that meet, she'll begin preparing for the long course season, and that will be followed by more swimming with her summer league team, the Ghent Square Torpedoes.
``I like to keep busy,'' says Harkins in an understatement. ``This past summer I got away from it and I was going to quit, but that's just too much of my time with nothing to do. I enjoy it too much, and I was missing it. Come July and August I was like, `I really want to go to swim practice.' ''
If she's not working her new job at McDonald's or doing homework - Harkins is seventh among the 256 students in her class with a 3.7 GPA - she is at swim practice. During the high school season, she practiced with the Titans after school and with ODAC on Wednesday and Friday mornings before class, every evening and again Saturday morning. Often that meant 11,000 yards a day - no sweat for Harkins who prefers distance anyway.
Titans coach Cheryl Jennison said she never worried about Harkins suffering a case of burnout.
``Kelley's good because she's dedicated to the sport; she flat out just likes it,'' said Jennison, who said Harkins, a team co-captain since her sophomore year, often helps teammates on technique. ``I would have chosen her (as captain), but the kids choose. And every year, they've chosen her.''
Harkins grew up knowing little else except loving the water. Her parents met at a pool and conveniently, they have one in their back yard. Her older sister, Heather, swam for Lake Taylor last year, and now younger siblings Erin and Sean are also part of the Titan team.
Harkins almost ended up at Maury, known for its dominant swimming program, until Heather talked her into giving Lake Taylor a try.
``Then I had the best freshman year,'' she says. ``The football team was winning, the swim team was doing OK, and that year on the swim team, everybody got along. Nobody was fighting; nobody was arguing. It was the best year I ever had. And then my sophomore year, things just got better.''
Walking up the school stairway to the library, she picks up stray pieces of littered paper talking about her love for Lake Taylor. Last year she wrote a letter to the editor that was published in The Virginian-Pilot when the class valedictorian refused to give the graduation speech because of his lack of pride in the school.
``We have some of the best teachers,'' she says, rattling off a list of names. ``Nobody is walking around the hallway pushing drugs on anybody. You're not going to walk into your homeroom and watch a drug deal going on.''
Harkins belongs to the Teen Council, the Model General Assembly and is president of the outdoor club; all this and she laments her lack of involvement in school activities this year. ``I'm only here half a day, so I can't do a lot,'' she says.
Harkins will swim in college, a first for anyone on Jennison's team. She's leaning toward the University of Indianapolis, largely because of its proximity to Notre Dame, her dream school, where she hopes to transfer. She's had her major picked out ever since she was little - medicine - and a specialty to go along with it.
``I want to do pediatrics in the trauma room,'' she says excitedly. ``It's a new field, and nobody is really involved in it. I really love kids and I want to center my attention on that. There's so many children coming in with gunshot wounds and different diseases that nobody recognizes because they don't know.''
And swimming - that will be a given always. In addition to the practices, she'll be a lifeguard this summer and give lessons twice weekly at Norfolk Academy. All this from a kid who once wondered if she'd make it past her first serious competition during the 200 IM.
``My first ODAC meet was traumatic,'' she says laughing. ``I was 14. I'm really bad at butterfly, but I made it through that. Then I was going from backstroke to breaststroke, and I swallowed this big ol' thing of water and started choking. And my arms got stuck in the lane line and I was just flogging around. I thought, `I'm going to drown.' It was so embarrassing, but I made it through.''
And she hasn't come up for air since. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by LAWRENCE JACKSON
Lake Taylor High School senior Kelley Harkins went unbeaten in
Eastern District swim meets this season.
by CNB