Swimming
Favorite athlete: Nathan Adrian
Favorite team: Carolina Panthers
Favorite memory competing in sports: My favorite memory is when I made Senior champs in the 100 breast.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: The funniest moment was when I smacked the water so hard during diving last year that it left a bruise the whole length of my calf.
Music on iPod: Mostly 2000’s rap and pump-up music
Future plans: I plan to become an actuary in the future.
Words to live by: “Do what makes you happy, and good things will come of it.”
One goal before turning 30: One goal I have is to be in love with my job and have no regrets (so far, so good)
One thing people don’t know about me: “I’m a whiz at number games like 24 and Sudoku
By Mary Jane Souder
Dayton Stahl loves to compete. Plain and simple.
And it’s not just about winning for the William Tennent senior – although he enjoys winning as much as the next person. Stahl understands the joy of competition, and the event is all but secondary.
“I swim anything the coach puts me in, and I’m not going to complain about it because I just love the competition,” the Tennent senior said. “There was a time when there weren’t any competitions, just practices, and I was really unmotivated to swim because there was nothing really pushing me to keep going.
“I just love the heat of the moment and competition. Even if I lose, it’s like, ‘Hey, I got to swim fast and made my coaches proud’ and so on and so forth.”
Last year, Stahl even volunteered to try his hand at diving even though he had no experience.
“There was one meet that came down to the very last event, and it would not have been anywhere as close if we had one male diver because the other team had one male diver and we had none,” he said. “On the bus, I talked to Lisa (Forlini) and she said, ‘If you want to try diving, you can try it out.’”
The Panthers’ coach, who lost her battle with cancer on Nov. 14, didn’t have to ask twice.
“I had never tried diving before, but let’s throw caution to the wind – let’s try it,” Stahl said. “I dove a couple of times a week.
“I’m not diving this year because I value swimming a lot more, and I didn’t improve all last year from December to Suburbans.
It’s his team-first attitude that made Stahl a valued member of the team from the moment he stepped on the pool deck as a junior newcomer after he moved to Warminster from Wayne.
“He joined the high school team, and we were completely shocked,” coach Meghan Forlini said. “A lot of times you expect athletes coming up from different years and different ages, and he was a little bit different in the fact that we weren’t expecting him to join the team. It was a very nice surprise that we added a new boys’ point scorer.
“To top it off – just finding out how nice of an individual Dayton was and how he came in not understanding the different traditions and things that go along with the team, and he jumped in full force.”
The transition to a new team was made relatively easy for Stahl by teammates who embraced him.
“It was really nice,” he said. “Everyone seemed so tightly-knit. The boys’ team was always so supportive.
“After every single meet, we would circle up, say other people’s achievements and clap really loud. It’s such a great environment. They really make it easy to love swimming and love everything about it.”
Swimming, according to Stahl, has enriched his high school experience.
“It really has,” he said. “It’s nice to know people from different grades and different backgrounds because you’re not locked into classes with the same people all year.
“Getting to know older kids, younger kids and getting more of a view what Tennent is really like instead of just one grade, it’s really nice.”
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Dayton Stahl grew up in the Conestoga School District, and he tried different sports.
“I did play baseball until I was in about eighth grade,” he said. “I quit baseball because I was a lot better at swimming that I was in baseball. I was pretty atrocious in baseball.”
Stahl has been swimming competitively since he was about eight years old – initially swimming on a country club team from ages eight through 13. He also began swimming on the winter club circuit and is now a member of Dolphins Community Aquatic Association (DCAA) out of Horsham. He competed at Conestoga High School as a freshman and sophomore, but Stahl moved to Warminster the summer before his junior year after his father remarried and moved to the area.
“It was obviously very hard the very first day, but I made friends rather quickly and got into the whole swing of things,” Stahl said.
It also helped that the Forlinis created a family atmosphere on the swim team.
“They’re all such wonderful people, and it really just brings it all together knowing that it’s a family affair,” he said. “It makes the whole team feel like one big family. Everyone has everyone else’s back.”
Stahl shares the objective of every swimmer to earn a berth in districts, but whether he reaches that goal or not is secondary to the enjoyment he receives simply competing.
“I love the breast, but I never really swim it at meets because there are three people on Tennent that rank higher than I do, which is completely fine,” he said. “They’re all great swimmers and great people.
“I don’t complain. They put me mainly in the backstroke, which is perfectly fine with me.”
Stahl, according to Forlini, became an immediate contributor when he joined the team.
“He swam a lot of backstroke, breaststroke and lot of IM last year,” the Panthers’ coach said. “He’s very versatile.
“Last year he even tried diving to try and help us out and score some points there. That’s what I mean that he joined full force.”
Although he is not a captain, Stahl plays a leadership role.
“His teammates really like him,” Forlini said. “I think he does a very good job as a senior being one of the leaders that kind of leads by example. He’s very much an individual that doesn’t always need to use his words.
“He shows others how a good teammate should be just by leading in practice, whether it’s going first in his lane or helping others out academically.”
It’s not unusual to find Stahl tutoring one of his teammates in the library prior to practice. A math whiz, Stahl – who is enrolled in a pair of AP math classes and earned a 710 on the math section of the SAT - is a member of Mathletes and participates in math league. As a junior he competed in a math competition at Temple, and he is a member of the Math Honor Society.
Stahl plans to major in actuarial science and has applied at Purdue, Temple and Pittsburgh.
Chosen as an escort for Tennent’s annual Senior Sweetheart, Stahl laughs when he acknowledges that he was the runner-up for best dressed for the senior superlatives after just over a year at the school.
Forlini, for one, is not surprised.
“The other week at a Saturday morning practice, everyone is in their sweats, and Dayton came strolling in in his khakis,” the Panthers’ coach said. “One of the kids said, ‘Why aren’t you wearing sweatpants?’ He said, ‘I don’t own sweatpants.’”
“I don’t know,” Stahl said. “I typically just brave the cold in shorts.”
Whatever the case, one fact, according to Forlini, is abundantly clear.
“He’s one of those kids you can definitely look at and no matter what he does – he’s going to give you 100 percent and always succeed,” the Panthers’ coach said. “I firmly believe that.”
