School: Norristown
Swimming
Favorite athlete: Jennifer Beth Thompson
Favorite team: Eagles!
Favorite memory competing in sports: Cheering for my team, I never run out of breath
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: The only time I was put on the field for jayvee softball was for three minutes at the end of a game. They told me to just stand in the outfield (I don’t even think it was an actual position). I was nowhere near the ball. That was their intent! J
Music on iPod: Bon Jovi, Katy Perry and Abba
Future plans: To live a meaningful and happy life (get a good education, start a family, make a difference in someone’s life, etc…)
Words to live by: ‘Dream like you’ll live forever, live like there’s no tomorrow.’
One goal before turning 30: To receive my PhD in chemical engineering
One thing people don’t know about me: I am DEATHLY afraid of going through mechanical car washes by myself.
A teammate on Alison Bateman’s swim team still recalls the first time she met the now Norristown senior.
“She still tells me, ‘The first time I met you – you stuck out your hand and said, “Hi, I’m Alison Bateman.” She said she had never met someone so formal on the first day of high school,” Bateman said with a laugh. “I put myself out there. I didn’t want to miss out on anything.
“I have always been the shy one in middle school, the one that stayed quiet, the one that did their work, the one that talked to a few people but kind of laid low. I didn’t want to be that person. I wanted to be someone who wasn’t going to regret anything later.”
In four months, Bateman will graduate from Norristown High School. It’s safe to say she didn’t miss anything, and she has absolutely no regrets.
In truth, it’s hard to imagine anyone anywhere getting more out of their high school experience than Bateman, who was nominated for 11 awards at the upcoming senior banquet. The list includes most optimistic, most spirited, most sensitive, most talkative, most likely to succeed, most intelligent, best personality and class sweetheart.
Hardly sounds like the person Bateman described herself as in middle school.
“I had never been to a public school before in my life,” she said of her transition to Norristown. “It was a big transition. It was culture shock. It was kids from all over the area, and it was huge.”
Bateman, who boasts a dazzling resume, has gotten the most out of her experience. The Norristown senior is vice president of her senior class and is involved in Student Council and Class Congress. She has been a team captain for the swim team for the past two years, and academically, she is ranked number one in her class of 400-plus seniors.
Bateman, however, is reluctant to talk about her lofty academic status.
“For me, it’s not about number one,” she said. “There are times when kids feel the pressure and feel they always have to be on top.
“My mom and dad have always been - ‘Do what’s best for you, not what’s best for anybody else.’ Especially this year, it’s so much more competitive with all the AP and honors classes. If I’m number one or I’m number 20, it just matters that I did it the right way. That’s what’s important to me.”
Talk to her swimming coach, and it’s clear that Bateman is one student-athlete who does things the right way both in and out of the pool.
“She is probably one of the hardest working athletes I have coached in a long time,” coach Beth O’Neil said. “She’s determined, and she doesn’t miss a practice for anything.
“The last two years she has been captain, and the girls have bonded more than any team I have ever coached. They get together, they go to movies, and they have done community service. The girls have decorated the locker room, they had a Christmas party – things other teams would not have chosen to do. It’s not only swimming but everything she does.”
In the pool, Bateman is one of her team’s most improved swimmers.
“She had never been one of our top swimmers, but this year – I don’t know where it’s come from, but she is our top swimmer,” O’Neil said.
Bateman has been swimming since her earliest recollection.
“It was one of those ‘Mom and Me’ or ‘Let’s make sure you’re in the water’ type classes,” she said.
At the age of nine, she began swimming competitively for the Norristown Aquatic Club but was forced to take a year off because of health problems that prevented her from being in a pool.
During her stint out of the pool, Bateman played softball the spring of her eighth and ninth grade years.
“I was awful at it,” she said. “I had no hand-eye coordination. I played bench and was the water cooler girl.
“It was about being part of a team and not necessarily playing. I was the cheerleader on the side. I’d be like, ‘We’re only down by 12 runs, girls,’ and in softball, that’s a lot. They’d say, ‘Ali, not that kind of cheer,’ but it was fun.”
Bateman returned to the pool her sophomore year.
“I have always been a sprinter, so the 50 free was my event,” she said. “When I got to high school, it was ‘No, Ali, we need you to swim the fly and IM’ because a bunch of seniors who had been serious swimmers had all graduated.
“All the butterfliers and IMers had graduated, and I could make it back and forth from one end of the pool to the other, so that became my event.”
These days, the sprints are Bateman’s specialty, and she is excelling.
“In our medley and 200 free relay, she’s been the anchor,” O’Neil said. “She has just come out of nowhere.
“Races where I think, ‘Okay, we’ll take second,’ she has come out of nowhere and finished first.”
Bateman credits her improved times to the extra time she has put in the pool.
“We also have a bunch of really talented freshmen, and not saying they drive the team, but they work their hardest, so everybody wants to work their hardest to reach their goals,” she said.
So committed to her team is Bateman that she is foregoing attending a Senior Banquet she helped plan – and is nominated for 11 awards - so she can participate in the SOL meet.
“She’s willing to give that up because my relay team is so close to going to districts,” O’Neil said. “She’s taking that on because she wants to.
“Swimming doesn’t put Norristown on the map, but we have a lot of good kids that work hard.”
Bateman admits that juggling her many activities can get tough.
“I would have loved to have gone to the Senior Banquet, but I feel the Suburban Ones are more important,” she said. “It’s not like I’m planning on making states, but being part of a team means putting the team first before what I want.
“I want to swim because this is my last senior meet. To be the class vice president and then not going to one of the big class functions we’re sponsoring is difficult, but it comes down to really being able to be assertive and putting my foot down, knowing when to say, ‘This is what I can do.’”
Outside of school, Bateman worked as a camp counselor since she was 13. The summer before her junior year, she traveled around Europe with People to People, and this past summer, she worked as a nanny.
“I taught the kids how to swim,” she said. “I helped them with their piano lessons even though I can’t play piano worth a darn. I helped them with their schoolwork.
“I really like helping other people find out what they’re good at. It’s rewarding seeing that light going off in their head.”
Bateman has also attended camps for herself, including leadership camps, engineering camps, and in her own words, ‘all the camps to try and figure out what I want to do after the easy (high school) years.”
A member of DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America), Bateman advanced to the national level in Kentucky last year. She hopes to duplicate that this year.
After much soul searching, Bateman, a member of the Engineering Community at Norristown, has decided to major in chemical engineering.
“When I started high school, I thought I wanted to be an architect, but then I realized I’m not any good with shapes,” she said. “Then I thought I wanted to be a journalist, but I couldn’t sit down and write an article because I’d get too impatient.
“Then I thought I wanted to be a teacher, especially from being around kids so much and helping kids. Then I thought maybe special needs kids because a lot of the kids I worked with in summer camp were special needs. But then I said it would hit home too much with me because like my classmates said, I’m pretty sensitive. Being a teacher or social worker were jobs I thought could be very rewarding, but also it could be very taxing on me because I really feel for people.
“Chemical engineering – I really love chemistry, and I have always been interested in science in general, so seeing how those two things work together, plus a woman engineer – it’s becoming more acceptable, but still something new. I like the challenge.”
Bateman’s list of colleges is an impressive one that includes Penn, Purdue, Lafayette, Drexel, Stanford and Bucknell. Penn is her top choice and not only because of its academic excellence but because it has a synchronized swim team.
“I would love to be a synchronized swimmer, as silly as that might sound,” said Bateman, who has been a dancer since she was three. “Dancing is a way of releasing stressful energy the way swimming helps me release stress. If I could combine those two aspects of my life, I think that would be really helpful for me, especially as I transition into college.”
An active member of Norristown’s Key Club, Bateman happily uses what little spare time she has to volunteer.
“I don’t know when she sleeps,” O’Neil said. “She’s come in for morning practice with bagels or cookies, and I’ll say, ‘When did you do that?’ She’ll say, ‘Last night before I went to bed.’”
Bateman is a glowing advertisement for her high school experience at Norristown. While the school has been good for her, Bateman also has been very good for the school.
