Girls Swimming notes: St. Charles East's Lauren Swartz finds college home at Wyoming

The University of Wyoming is nearly 1,000 miles away from St. Charles by car, but that didn't stop St. Charles East swimmer Lauren Swartz, a senior, from choosing to commit to the school's swim program.

Fortunately, Swartz has extended family that lives about four hours away from the campus in Laramie and that will make the eventual transition to college a bit easier.

Swartz weighed interest from a handful of schools in the Midwest, including Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. The pull out west, however, was too strong to ignore.

"It really came down to 'I want to be close to my family,' " Swartz said. "Also, their swim team there is going to help me get better in the future."

The Wyoming women's swim program took third at the Mountain West Swimming and Diving Championships last season. It was its highest finish since 2013, when Wyoming also took third.

Swartz, who qualified for the state meet last season in the 50-yard freestyle, "absolutely fell in love" with Wyoming's team dynamic and the bond between the men's and women's teams.

"They're really like a little family," Swartz said. "Coming from St. Charles East, I think that our swim team is very close and very tight-knit. And I really like that about our team. Our team dynamic is just so fun. And when I saw it in Wyoming, I was like, 'Whoa, that's where I want to be. That's what I want to do. Look at how much fun they're having. Look at how much they push each other during practice.' "

For now, Swartz is trying to navigate her senior season in a time unlike any because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An obvious change is the atmosphere at meets. In normal times, it's extremely common for a pool deck to be crowded with teammates cheering and roaring over the sounds of whistles and splashes of water.

Swim meets nowadays are very different. Swimmers wear masks on the pool deck, there are no relay races, and squads are split up to accommodate space restrictions.

"Now, to me, it looks like a ghost town," Swartz said. "We're all in masks. We're all six feet apart."

St. Charles North adapting

Like all high school swimming programs, St. Charles North is adapting to new protocols.

The North Stars collaborated with district and administrative officials over several weeks to set up their system.

"We're in three completely different practice times. We've got 18 kids in the pool at a time," St. Charles North coach Rob Rooney said. "We're just very happy that we're in the water and the kids are really embracing it. They enjoy the fact they have some normalcy in life."

There's also a new look to how meets are conducted.

"We had a meet last week against Naperville Central. ... If we were racing NC head to head in a normal setting, there would be close to 120 girls on the pool deck at a time," Rooney said. "It is weird to not see that. The atmosphere and the enthusiasm of the meet is very different."