Chloe Verdin '26 Recruiting Profile

Hi, my name is Chloe Verdin and I’m currently in my Sophomore year of high school attending Norwin High School in Irwin PA.  I first started my swim career November 2019 after having made the Norwin Aqua Club team.  This had been a struggle for me to achieve for a long time because I had some not so pleasant experiences with pools when I was much younger and for a long time was left with a paralyzing fear of water.  Never the less, I never gave up on my dream of joining a swim team and after a couple attempts at learn to swim courses I was finally able to make that dream a reality.  Of course my celebration had been short lived since only after a few short months on the team, the covid-19 pandemic had started.  From then on it all started going downhill for a while.  First we were unable to practice because of Covid but even when restrictions were lifted we still had to wait until fall of 2022 to be able to practice in our pool again because it had been under construction for 2.5 years during Covid.  During this time we had to make the trip to a different pool that was 45 minutes each way and it destroyed our team bringing us from over 80 families pre Covid to less than 20 during this time.  Thankfully, we have been back at our pool as of this past year and we’re finally starting to rebuild our team.  I still to this day swim with NAC the rest of the year when I’m not swimming for my schools Varsity swim team.  

Last year, during my Freshman year, I got the opportunity to become apart of my Highschools Varsity swim team.  Our season last from mid November 2022 to around mid February 2023.  Throughout the season we swam 2.5 hour practices each night after school and 3 hour morning practices on Saturdays with weigh-lifting sessions and drylands accommodating them.  Throughout the season my times had personally improved dramatically and even though I wouldn’t usually get that good of place in my events as it was my Freshman year, I still saw many improvements within my races and even swam some firsts like the 500 freestyle.  I was even able to letter during my freshman year which I find to be quite the achievement for myself.  Although I do feel like Varsity was a good experience for me to learn and get better, it did have some negative effects on me.  The biggest issue I encountered during my season was my shoulders constantly being in pain.  This is something that I still deal with even months later and i’m working hard to improve so that I can focus on swimming without having to worry about possible worse shoulder injuries. 

As I mentioned my shoulder injuries and how I'm working to help heal them, one of the things that has been important in that process is one of my coaches from NAC.  See this coach in particular is a personal trainer and even owns his own gym so he’s been able to understand how my shoulders have been impacting me.  Over this past summer I've started to go to his gym for him to help me rebuild the strength in my shoulders and he has also been able to address other injuries I've encountered such as when my hip with breaststroke kicking.  All in all he’s been a huge help in helping me be able to rebuild my strength within my shoulders and I'm so thankful for the help he has given me.  

Now academically speaking, I’m always challenging and pushing myself beyond my limits to succeed.  Last year in my Freshman year I took all the honors and AP courses I could with Honors Geometry, Honors English 9, Honors Biology, Honors Communications, and AP Human Geography.  I ended the year with all A’s in my classes and I got a 4 on my AP exam.  This year I’m again taking all the honors and AP courses available to me with Honors Algebra 2, Honors English, Honors/CHS Chemistry, and AP World History.  My goal this year is to keep all of my grades up, preferably above 90%.  As for my extracurricular activities, I’m participating in Model United Nations, Euro Challenge, WIRC, PYRCA, FCCLA, Stage Crew, Global Scholars and I'll probably end up joining more this year. 

I’m really looking forward to these next few season this year as well as for this school year and being able to hopefully improve even more in swimming and be able to reach more of my personal goals along the way.