Talented swimmer Baar also a vaulter (VA)

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.roanoke.com/sports/highschoo ... /xp-103409

Swimming senior seeks open waters
Nancy Baar has made her choice; now she's become a star.
By Katrina Waugh
981-3127


Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times
Nancy Baar practices her start before a district swim meet at Hargrave Military Academy. The Patrick Henry High senior signed a scholarship to swim at the University of Virginia this fall.

Nancy Baar leaned her pony-tailed head back against the seat of her car.

"I love sleep," she said with a whisper of nostalgia for the warm covers she'd so recently left behind.

She paused for a moment, her hand unconsciously reaching out to assure itself that her baggie of sliced apples was still there.

"And food," she said.

Baar's car was the only one in the parking lot of Cave Spring High School just before 5 a.m. She was waiting for coach Doug Fonder and her Virginia Gators teammates to arrive to begin the day's weight-lifting routine.

Baar has given up sleeping in and staying up late and hanging out with friends. Though she eats heartily all day long, she has given up hope of ever feeling "full."

She has given it all up by choice, because she wants, more than anything, to swim fast.

There are times when Baar chooses speed over oxygen.

"I'm very competitive," she said with a laugh. "It's almost a problem for me.

"I love competing ... and winning."

Baar has been swimming since she was a tadpole, and next fall she'll be swimming for the University of Virginia. She's already reached her goal of winning a college scholarship, and now she's setting her sights on making the Olympic trials "at least."

Baar's name tops the list of Timesland's fastest swim times in nearly every event, but her main focus is on the 50- and 100-yard freestyle.

"My best races are when I can't remember what I was thinking because I wasn't," she said.

When she thinks too much, she slows down, and swimming is a sport where fractions of a second make the difference between winning and what Baar calls "failure."

"Finishing second," she said, pausing for a moment as she considered the possibility that there might be something even worse. "Or third, or fourth ..."

Baar placed fourth in both the 50- and 100-free in the Group AAA state championships last year. In the 50, she was .012 seconds behind winner Amanda Kendall of Robinson High School. Kendall also won the 100, finishing .49 seconds ahead of Baar.

Baar gets her final shot at a state title in the Group AAA meet this weekend, competing in her two individual events and on PH's 200-yard medley and 400-free relay teams.

For most of her career, Baar swam only in summer leagues. She declined all invitations to join a year-round program. Swimming was fun, and she was fast, but there were just too many other things to do. She was a gymnast and played basketball and volleyball and even tried her hand at pole vaulting. In almost every sport she tried, she excelled, even though none of them got her full attention.

"She has a gift," her mom, Mary Delaney, said.

Though she'd only trained in the summers, in her freshman year at Patrick Henry High School, she was swimming fast enough to qualify for the state meet.

Fonder offered to let her train for state with the Gators, then talked her into joining the year-round club. Fonder excused Baar from predawn workouts for a year because she was still playing volleyball for the Patriots.

"Everyone was so jealous," Baar said, laughing.

Eventually, though, Baar had to choose. Volleyball, which she'd stuck with into high school, is a team sport that couldn't accommodate an athlete who wasn't there all the time. Swimming won out.

She hung on to pole vaulting even when her coach, Tommy Jones, moved to Franklin County.

"I trust him," Baar said. "Pole vaulting kind of freaks me out and I know he would throw his body out before he would let me fall [to the ground]. My worst fear is that I'll get to the top and not have enough momentum to get over."

She won't start training until after the major national swim meets are over in early April, but she flashed a bright smile when she thought about competing in the state track meet. She tied for fourth in Group AAA last year, vaulting 10 feet, 6 inches.

"I can't wait," she said. "There'll be people there who pole vault like I swim.

"It'll be fun."

Baar said she is glad she didn't specialize too soon.

"I see a lot of people who've been doing this all their life, and they're getting burned out," Baar said. "It's sad, because they have a lot of talent."

At this time of year, Baar is lucky to see the sun.

She and the rest of the Gators swim for three hours each afternoon, Monday through Friday. They also swim Monday, Friday and Saturday mornings, finishing up before most of their classmates have rolled out of bed. Wednesday morning, they lift weights at Cave Spring.

In between workouts, Baar attends Patrick Henry and Governor's School.

"She is as dedicated to her schoolwork as she is to swimming," Delaney said.

Baar said that having to schedule around swimming has actually helped her with her schoolwork. She can't afford to goof off; there just isn't time.

By the time she gets home from evening practice and finishes dinner, she has just about 90 minutes before she falls into bed at around 9:30 p.m.

And then she's up again.

Delaney, who admits to having a private celebration when Baar finally got her driver's license and no longer needed a ride to those early-morning practices, said she has never once had to prod her daughter to get up and go.

That dedication, Fonder said, is what really sets Baar apart.

"She's a gifted athlete," he said. "But at the senior level, they're all gifted athletes."

Baar, 5-foot-734 and 149 pounds, bench presses 130 pounds and squats 195 in her normal workout. Fonder said she could bench maybe 150 in a test.

But she insists that she is not "a beast."

Baar is quick with a laugh and, though she steadfastly refused to share even a sliver of apple under a hail of teasing from her teammates -- "I don't like to share," she said. "I'm hungry all the time." -- she cheerfully chattered about dresses for PH's winter dance between lifts.

"Nancy is very social," Fonder said. "She's a nice girl. She gets along with everybody."

Baar thought she caught a rare break two weeks ago -- a blessed Friday when exams were over and no swim meet coincided with a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville.

Then a scheduling conflict with the pool at Hargrave Military Academy forced the district swim meet to be rescheduled for that very Friday.

It was time to compromise. Baar had already qualified for state in her two individual events, the 50- and 100-yard freestyle races, and with the two PH relay teams -- 400 free and the 200 medley -- she was already qualified at least for regionals. She didn't actually have to go to districts at all.

Still, she rode down to Chatham with the team and swam two events, winning the 50 free in a time two seconds faster than her nearest competitor but an agonizing .3 seconds slower than she hoped. The 200-medley relay trimmed a full second off of its time.

A quick change in the bathroom and off she went, hoping desperately to get to Charlottesville in time to see the opening act, Gnarls Barkley.

It was a quick diversion, a single break in a routine so exacting that Baar even has occasion to count her breaths.

In the 50 free, she is down to one.

She powers the length of the pool and makes her turn without once lifting her head out of the water.

After the turn, she allows her screaming lungs a single gasp before plowing the rest of the way home.

"I used to take three breaths," she explained.

"But Doug kept saying 'one less breath, one less breath.' "

Add it to the list. Along with free time and sleeping in and feeling sated, Baar has given up breathing freely.

"Yeah, it's worth it," Baar said without a blink of hesitation. "I don't like to get up at 5 a.m. and it takes a lot of my time.

"But when I swim well, it makes me really happy."