Longmont teen aiming for Olympics in swimming

Remember Ed Moses? He’s the American swimmer who took silver and gold medals in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia – and who didn’t start swimming competitively until his senior year in high school in California.

Jennifer Harrison with Ryan Lochte, 2004 and 2008 Olympic gold medalist.

Well, meet Jennifer Harrison, who might just turn out to be Longmont’s version of Moses. Harrison, 16, has always been athletic, but only began swimming competitively a year ago. Now she’s training with renowned Olympic coach Randy Reese with the Clearwater Aquatics USA Swimming team in Florida, and her aim is high.

“My goal is to go to the Olympics,” she says by phone.

She may just do it. Described variously by her friends, family and coaches as tenacious, driven, outgoing and perhaps a little stubborn, she has made a deep impression in just one year of competition and hard-core practice.

“What she has done is comparable with kids who have been swimming four or five, eight or 10 years,” says Curt Colby, who has worked with Jennifer on swimming workouts and strength training in Colorado. A professional coach who also has been the varsity swimming coach at Boulder High School for 12 years, Colby is astonished by Harrison’s rapid achievement in the pool. “It wasn’t like she hadn’t done anything and was coming off the couch. She is very athletic. But in swimming she has excelled exceedingly fast. She is a very talented kid.”

Although she has tried every stroke, Jennifer is now focusing on butterfly. She’s certainly got the shoulders to excel in swimming’s most challenging event.

“Even though it’s really tough, I find it to be really beautiful,” she says. “I’m all upper body.”

Jennifer confirms her lifelong interest in all things athletic – and even confesses to swimming in the lake near her family’s home in Lake Valley since she was 7 or 8. She says she got hooked on the idea of going to the Olympics as a swimmer after watching the 2008 games last summer.

“I have always been very active since age 6. I used to do gymnastics, snowboarding, bicycling, running. I didn’t swim competitively, but I’ve always been really strong,” she says matter-of-factly. “After seeing the Olympics last year, I just decided that’s what I wanted to do.”

Of course, getting to the Olympics – or even just competing on the national swimming scene – requires a huge investment of time and sacrifice. Harrison now spends most of the year in Florida with her mother, Linda Harrison, while her father, Rick Harrison, continues to work as a computer programmer in Colorado.

By all accounts, Jennifer is up to the task.

“When she decides she wants to do something, she will do it,” her father says, laughing. “As a parent the challenge has always been to get her to decide to do something we think she should do. But as soon as she decides, she really goes for it.”

Previously home-schooled, Jennifer now attends the Insight School of Colorado, an online, public high school that works in partnership with the Julesburg School District.

The school is “extremely flexible,” she says. “It’s exactly what I need for my vigorous training program.”

Jennifer can attend classes online participate in a live chat discussion with a teacher and other students, or go back and watch a recording if she is unable to make the scheduled class. She says the school has allowed her to develop friendships and that there is plenty of social interaction via email, chat and other communications channels. She loves that she can take a nap whenever she needs one and get out of bed on her own schedule – “Right now, because of training, I’m sleeping 11 or 12 hours a night,” she says.

But, Jennifer says, she doesn’t have much time for an outside social life, anyway.

“Swimming people are kind of who I’m hanging out with right now,” she says cheerily. “If I could do something different with my life, honestly, I would ask for more time. I would love to be able to go to a movie on Friday, but with training and homework, that’s just not happening right now.”