Owen Higinbotham '23 Recruiting Profile

I have been swimming for my entire life, and I started swimming professionally at 7 years old when I joined the Fanwood-Scotch Plains YMCA in 2012. More than half my life I have been swimming for FSPY, and that time on my team has shown me how to work hard, teamwork, and how to prioritize what’s important in my life.

This past year has been crazy for all of us, but with all the canceled meets and practices it really showed how committed some of us were to the sport by training harder when we were not forced to by our coaches. With all the covid restriction and quarantines, my team had much less practices than it usually does, but that did not stop me from working harder than ever to try and reach my goals. Being one of the top runners on my cross country and track team, during quarantine and throughout the season I would regularly run over 30 miles a week, along with doing other dry-land workouts to stay in the best shape possible for the season. I attended as many practices as possible, and when they were canceled I went to my friends pool and swam workouts there. I am always excited to try new things and explore new challenges, so over the 2021 summer, I competed in the New Jersey State triathlon and became the state champion.

Because of the training schedule I kept during quarantine, I was able to get best times in all of the events that I swam in meets this season. Some highlights of my swim include dropping over 7 seconds in my 100 Freestyle SCY (from 55.41 to 48.78) and dropping over 17 seconds in my 500 Freestyle SCY (from 5:03.11 to 4:46.14). I always drop lots of time every season because I work harder and harder, and I have no intention of breaking that pattern!

The same way I work hard and push myself in swimming, I push myself in my academics. For my entire freshman and sophomore years I have studied hard to keep up my grades and stay on the distinguished honor roll. Most of my classes are AP and honors classes because I love to challenge myself academically.

I love challenging myself and always try to push myself and my teammates to the next level. I cannot wait to swim at the collegiate level to do just that!