Lauren Jolley, a senior at Lexington High School and captain of the Gators Swim Club, recently committed to Middlebury College for Division III swimming.

Jolley, who has been swimming for eleven years, describes swimming as an unexpected but welcome change to her life. Despite her multiple achievements in swimming, she did not originally intend to pursue it long-term.

“I actually started swimming competitively to keep me in shape for softball. Turned out, I was really bad at softball and pretty decent at swimming so I decided to stick with that,” Jolley said.

The Gators Swim Club has tough competition in their league, with regular meets against other nationally-ranked clubs in the USA Swimming Program. This type of competition demands difficult practices, and dedication to the sport.

“As a team itself, it is pretty competitive and we train at a pretty high intensity. So [we train] six days a week up to eight times a week,” Jolley said.

One of the difficulties of college selection as a student-athlete is finding a program that fits the athlete’s personal preferences. While looking for the right colleges, Jolley realized that the team culture and student-athlete balance at Middlebury was perfect for herself.

“I got to stay with the team for a couple days… and practice with them. That was super awesome because it was just such a nice welcoming community. That for me really solidified that this was a really good place where I’d want to swim for the next four years,” Jolley said. 

As swimming largely entails individual races, Jolley explains how building a strong community and team culture is especially important compared to other sports. 

“I felt that growing up I didn’t really have a community with the team, at least a strong culture where I felt like I could look up to the older girls and kind of go to them,” Jolley said. 

As a senior and captain who is graduating this year, Jolley hopes to pass down this sense of community to the next generation and inspire others to succeed and find passion in the sport.

“We do have a pretty small girls team, so I’ve been trying to do girls’ team events to forge closer bonds with them. It’s to make sure that they know they always have someone they can go to especially in such a male dominated team and sport. I would hope that that culture continues and they feel like they can always reach out to me or each other if they need help,” Jolley said.