Swimming
Favorite athlete: Ryan Lochte
Favorite team: Philadelphia Phillies and Flyers. I love watching baseball and hockey!
Favorite memory competing in sports: Bus rides and going out to eat after meets. Summer swim meets and aquatic meets.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: One time we had an away swim meet, and I was positive I packed everything in my bag, but when I got to the away team's locker room, I had forgotten my swim suit! I was so embarrassed!! Thankfully, me and one of my other teammates had races that weren't the same, so I borrowed her suit whenever she wasn't swimming and when I needed to race, and she wore my warm-ups! Her suit size was a little smaller than mine, so it was a tight fit. But we all learned to laugh about it later, and I never forgot my suit ever again!
Music on iPod: A combination of everything. Taylor Swift, Linkin Park, Eminem, The Summer Set, the Fray, the Beatles. And, of course, all the pop artists liek Pitbull, Nicki Minaj and Britney Spears!
Future plans: To swim in college and hopefully drop more time and get more personal bests. To major in biology, get my degree and either be a teacher, nurse of physician's assistant.
Words to live by: 'You can't put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.' - Michael Phelps or 'Whether you think you can't or that you can, you're usually right.' - Henry Ford
One goal before turning 30: To be married, have a steady job - maybe in the medical field - and have a kid or two of my own.
One thing people don't know about me: When I was a lot younger (about 8-10), i used to Irish dance. I always enjoyed it, but I guess I liked swimming better.
Sarah Alps had been in love with swimming right from the start.
“I started swimming when I was really little,” the William Tennent senior said. “My parents signed me up for swim lessons and that was just it. Right from the beginning I was so into it.
“The one thing I remember from that age is that I loved being in the water, even the bathtub. I was just a little water bug all the time.”
Those kiddie swim lessons made way for the junior team at Centennial Aquatics. Centennial is coached by Lisa and Jamie Forlini, the same duo that coaches the William Tennent team.
“I started swimming competitively with them at a younger age and I realized I really liked it,” Alps said. “Then as I advanced and got a little older I joined the big girl team and I really, really loved it.”
Alps loved her time on the varsity team.
“From my freshman year to now I can look back and see how different I am, how much I’ve changed because of the experience of being on the swim team,” she said. “Being on this team really helped me to grow and it helped shape me into the person I am.”
Alps is home schooled.
“I’d been swimming and working my way up through the aquatic club but it didn’t occur to me that I could swim on the high school team,” she said. “I didn’t think you could do that if you were home schooled.
“But then the Forlinis told me that I could swim because home schooled students are allowed to do extracurricular activities and I was really happy.
“It was pretty important to me, not because I have a problem meeting people or I lack social skills but because being on the team made me so many new friends, it taught me how to work with others and it taught me responsibility and how to be a leader.
“It’s definitely been a big part of my life.”
Being home schooled has its ups and downs.
“Sometimes it’s like ‘Oh my gosh, I got all my work done, now I can do this or that’ and sometimes I’m so swamped that I think I’ll never finish,” Alps said. “One thing I learned is how to manage my time because I had to get it all done and keep my grades up because if I didn’t, then I couldn’t swim.
“Swimming helped me learn how do to all this and it motivated me to learn how to do all this.
“I do have good grades and I work at maintaining them but I have balance in my life. I don’t just swim and study.”
Alps, who also plays the piano and sings in her church choir, was a team captain this year.
“It was a big responsibility,” she said. “It was a lot more than I thought it was going to be. It wasn’t just organizing things. I had to help get the team motivated and take more of a leadership role.
“When you become a captain you have a different role on the team. The others look up to you. Instead of just being another swimmer, you are the person they are watching and I took that very seriously.”
The team struggled in the won-loss column this year, going 5-8 overall.
“In my junior year we lost a lot of important swimmers,” she said. “We learned to work with what we have and organize things to the best of our ability.
“Sometimes that meant people had to be moved around in order to maximize the points that we could score, but everyone was willing to do that.
“We did have some people on the team this year that by the time they’re seniors they’ll be stronger and hopefully they’ll continue to get more incoming people so the program will continue to grow.”
Her final meet for the Panthers was the Suburban One League National Conference championships, held at Council Rock North.
“Swimming isn’t just about winning meets,” she said. “It’s about individual improvements as well.
“At champs, we were more concerned with getting a lot of people to do their best times and we had a lot of improvement, so that was really exciting.”
A meet highlight for Alps was actually the 200-yard individual medley swim of a teammate, fellow senior Deanna Battis.
“She’d been working so hard and her goal was to go a 2:23 in the IM,” Alps said. “She went a 2:20. She was so excited and we were all super excited for her. She made about a six second drop and everyone was looking at the clock and looking at her and we were all screaming.
“It was one of those great team moments and that’s what it’s really about. You push each other in practice and when you see your teammate achieve a big goal you’re really excited, too.”
She is the kind of athlete coaches love to coach.
“Sarah is always happy and she sees the glass as half full,” Jamie Forlini said. “If she doesn’t get her best time, she doesn’t get down about it. She just says ‘Next time’ and doesn’t dwell on it.
“She gives her best every single time and she’s really come a long way. We’re going to miss her next year.”
The Forlinis won’t get rid of Alps quite so easily.
“I’m not sure what my college plans are yet, but I’m definitely going to come back and visit,” she said. “Tennent swimming was such a big part of my life. As a freshman I never would have guessed that it would be that way but it was like one big family and it was great.”
