Girls' Swimmer of the Year: Lindsay Brown

For her outstanding swimming season, the freshman has been named Skagit Valley Herald Girls’ Swimmer of the Year.

Despite being a high school newcomer, Brown swam to a pair of top-four finishes at the Class 2A State Meet as the Seahawks finished fourth as a team.

She placed second in the 200-yard individual medley in 2 minutes, 11.98 seconds, and fourth in the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:09.16.

Both finals times were improvements over her preliminary state races.

Brown said she came into this season not really expecting to make too big of a splash.

From a family of swimmers, Brown first took to the pool when she was about 7.

“I liked it,” she said. “It’s a lot of fun and I was not good at land sports.”

So she took to the water where she continues to leave a serious wake.

“I knew I could make state,” Brown said. “But I just wasn’t sure about the state times.”

As it turned out, she need not have worried as she cruised into the state championship meet following a bi-district meet where she managed to lower her times in chunks, as in eight seconds off her 200 individual medley time and six seconds off her 100 breaststroke.

“I didn’t think I was going to make the actual cuts (in time) that I did,” Brown said. “It was pretty cool and I was surprised.”

She carried that momentum into the state meet — a meet she said was different than any other that she’d experienced.

“It was very stressful,” Brown said. “There were a whole bunch of girls and they were all stressed. Everyone was antsy. But after the finals, I was really happy.”

And during them, Brown said she was focused on not focusing too much. In other words, she just wanted to swim her race.

“Next year, I want to finish first,” she said.

She knows what improvements need to be made to achieve that goal.

“I need to work on pushing off from the wall,” she said. “And to not stress out before the race. But you really can’t control that. But I plan on working on it.

“I’m excited to have three more years to compete and I think we are going to do very well next year as a team.”