Kaylee Heimes '18 Recruiting Profile

I was only one year old when I first started swim lessons and I wanted to stay in swim lessons forever.  At age eight, my parents made me try out for the swim team, and even though I hated it, they encouraged me to continue, and I am very thankful that I did.  Swimming has become who I am and I would not trade that for anything.

I am always striving to be better, faster, and stronger in and out of the pool and rarely miss a practice, with my ultimate goal to qualify for the 2020 Olympic Trials in 100 and 200 Backstroke.   I have already met several of my goals along the way, including qualifying at age 14 for the 2015 USA Swimming Sectional and 2015 YMCA Long Course National Championship meets.  

My current goals are to qualify for the 2017 USA Junior National and 2018 USA National meets.  My goals at the collegiate level include contributing to my team’s success competing at conference and NCAA championship meets.   

Academically, I have been pushing myself to excel and have focused my course work on Advanced Placement and Honors courses while maintaining 4.2 weighted GPA.  I plan to continue my academic success during my collegiate career, which includes earning a Ph.D. in Meteorology.

Being part of a high level collegiate team is also very important to me.  My club team and the friendships that I have developed along the way have been a large part of my success.  As a team, we do many activities to help the community and other swimmers. One of my favorite things is getting the younger swimmers excited to swim at meets. Congratulating them after they swim brings them so much joy and it reminds me of why I swim. Looking to the pool deck, I see the young swimmers cheering for me as I swim, which makes me swim harder so I don’t let them down.