Calm approach has buoyed Penncrest’s freshman sensation Walsh
NEWTOWN SQUARE >> Claire Walsh doesn’t talk about her swimming exploits with the tone and delivery of someone who counts her biggest lesson this season as learning how to relax.
But the poised Penncrest freshman has taken that granular piece of advice most to heart in her debut season. The juxtaposition is clear as she sits on deck at her club team, Suburban Seahawks, which measures development of its passel of star swimmers at marathon multi-day meets drawn against fields from all over the region or nation. For Penncrest, the task is simplified in scope, yet compounded by repetition twice a week for nearly two months, carrying outsized team importance without the weight of weeks of anticipation.
“I get too uptight before my races sometimes, and my coach has a great sense of humor, and she’s been really great this whole season with helping me relax and focus,” Walsh said. “There’s not enough time and energy to be super nervous for every race. You have to take it step by step and day by day and do your best every day.”
Walsh has passed every test that the rigors of varsity swimming have presented, but she’ll be challenged in a new way this week when the Central League Championships kick off the swimming postseason. Walsh will compete Thursday and Friday at Radnor High School, while the boys championships are contested Friday and Saturday.
To say that Walsh has been flawless is not hyperbole. The freshman sprinting sensation hasn’t lost an individual race as a high schooler, going 20-for-20 in 10 dual meets. (She missed one, Lower Merion in December.) It took her until the Jan. 12 meet with Haverford to even lose as part of a relay. Even so, Penncrest’s medley relay was unbeaten for the season. The only time Walsh failed to win events was as part of 200 freestyle relays against Haverford, Strath Haven and Radnor.
Walsh’s racing pedigree is well established. An imposing figure at 6-foot-2, she’s turned heads at Suburban and in summer swimming with Broomall’s Lake. Her fastest times in U.S. Swimming competition rival the fastest times ever produced in Delco’s high school seasons.
And as the season has progressed, she’s gotten faster. She enters championship season with the second-fastest time in Delco and fastest in the Central League in the 50 free at 24.28 seconds. She’s third in Delco and second in the Central in the 100 in 53.50. Both of those events figure to bring her into contact with Conestoga’s Madison Ledwith, with Walsh having outdueled the Stoga sprinter head-to-head in a swim that Walsh and her coach, Jess Levy, see as a major statement of her credentials.
“She’s a freshman so she has a lot of time to grow, but she has been racing pretty much her whole swimming career, so she knows how to race,” Levy said. “She’s focused on her times and she wants to be No. 1. She loves the race, she likes the catch.”
Centrals provides Walsh the biggest high school stage yet on which to prove that. That process will pit her against freshman sprint stars of years past. Strath Haven junior Summer Martin, who exploded on the scene to qualify for the PIAA Championships in two events as a freshman, and Radnor sophomore Julia Cullen, who pulled the same rookie double feat, should factor into the equations alongside Ledwith, though each dabbles quite successfully elsewhere (Martin in the 200 free, Cullen in the 100 butterfly).
The added benefit for Walsh is that she’s trained with both Cullen and Martin at Suburban. Walsh’s success before entering the high school ranks, as well as her prominent stature on deck, makes her easy to pick out. It’s also made her the beneficiary of plenty of advice on navigating the club-to-high-school transition, from Suburban coach Charlie Kennedy on down to her peers.
“I think it’s been really nice this year hearing so much advice from so many different people,” Walsh said. “Just their personal perspectives on how to be more successful, so I think hearing advice from whether it’s a high school coach or coach Charlie or Summer, it’s really nice to get those different perspectives.”
Thursday marks the first installment of another transition, one that brings swimmers away from the dual-meet mentality and toward fixating again on the clock. Walsh has long since sealed automatic qualification to the District One Championships, where she’ll vie in two weeks for tickets to the PIAA Championships.
Getting there begins with internalizing the lessons of the high school season. From Walsh’s optimism, you sense she won’t be overawed by the spectacle of Cenetrals.
“I think when you’re swimming in such a fast pool like Radnor with such fast swimmers, it’s such a great way to push yourself,” she said. “They’re such great swimmers, so it just makes you want to race and go that much faster.”
