Heights swim team receives national student-athlete award

Heights High swim and diving team members: (back row) Wesley Shumaker, Gabriel Duffy, Cody Radivoyevitch, Andrew Moore, Jacob Braverman, Zach Brust, Brian Hall and David Fleischer; (middle) Coach Dan Budin, Laynie Gosselin, Maria Tarnay, Nino Pereira and Melanie Graham; (front) Rory McClellan, Glennis Covault, Sylvia Snow-Rackley, Elena Rinaldi, Khalen Flowers, Jesse Gross and Erika Gifford. [not pictured: team members Schuyler Radivoyevitch, Ben Schuster, Montreal Watkins, Emma Hodges and Jessie Titas.]

The Heights High Swimming and Diving team embodies the term student-athlete. The team received The All-American Scholar Team Award from the National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association (NISCA) while maintaining a grueling practice schedule of 14–17 hours a week.

The 12-member girls’ team earned a collective GPA of 3.82 (unweighted); when taking into account the weighted grades from AP courses, the collective GPA was 4.3. The girls’ team received Gold-level recognition, placing it at the very top nationally.

In 2016, fewer than 60 of 16,000 teams received the Gold award.

The 12-member boys’ team received the Bronze-level award for team members’ academic accomplishments, placing it among the best-performing teams in the country.

Coach Dan Budin is extremely proud of the team. “Being on the swim team and diving team requires a major commitment of time and energy,” said Budin. “For these students to earn such high grades while devoting so much time to training is a real accomplishment. It has been a privilege to work with them and witness their incredible academic success.”

For the past two years, the team has used the Warrensville Heights High School pool for practice and meets, which required added travel time.

Next year the team will practice and compete in a brand-new home pool in the renovated Heights High. The new facility will offer more practice time than was available to the team at the temporary site. “We are really looking forward to swimming in the new pool next year,” said Budin.

Heights High Supervisor of Athletics Dwight Hollins said, “The team's academic performance shows a strong to commitment to the Tiger Nation philosophy of student first and athlete second. We are proud of their hard work in the pool and the classroom.”

Joy Henderson

Joy Henderson is the parent/community liaison for Heights High.

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Volume 10, Issue 5, Posted 9:45 AM, 04.18.2017