Los Alamos swimmer Sarah Lott is on track to qualify for Olympic Trials this summer in Nebraska. Photo by Ranee McElderry Stewart
Video clip from New Mexico state championship – winning the 200 Free race: Click here.
Los Alamos High School senior Sarah Lott is ranked 23 in the Nation for the 100m Free for the 2015-2016 season for females 17-18 years of age (World Record Holder – Katie Ledecky is 1st). Lott, 18, wowed the crowd last month with her impressive swims at the 2016 New Mexico High School State Championship in Albuquerque.
She started the competition leading off with the 50 backstroke swim in the women’s 200-yard Medley relay, getting to the wall first with an impressive split of 25.91. With great swims from the final 3 legs (Jessica Moore, breaststroke; Sara Shiina, butterfly; and Sydney Schoonover, freestyle), the relay team broke the LAHS record for this event (set in 2004) with a new time of 1:50.33.
Lott was immediately back up on the blocks after the men’s Medley relays for the 200 freestyle race, which she dominated from start to finish, breaking the New Mexico High School State record with a time of 1:49.29 and achieving All-American status. She also bettered her Los Alamos High School record of 1:53.68, which she set as a sophomore in 2014.
The biggest challenge for Lott at State came in the 100 free, where she again placed first with a time of 50.20, while breaking another one of her school records (52.07, which she set as a sophomore). This swim also qualified her as All-American.
The final race of the meet was the 400 freestyle relay. Although the team finished third overall, they shattered the previous Los Alamos High School record of 3:39.23 that Lott and Isabelle Runde helped set in 2014. Lott, Runde, Jessica Moore and Kaitlin Bennett finished this event with an impressive time of 3:35.42.
Sarah Lott will attend the University of Utah in the fall and said she will be a proud Ute. Courtesy photo
“I really like the challenge of swimming and competing and can’t wait to join my new team in the fall,” Lott said.
Although Lott did not swim for the high school her junior year, in her three years of Hilltopper swimming, she managed to claim five individual records in the 50, 100, and 200 freestyle, 100 fly and 100 backstroke (out of eight total individual events), and helped to break two relay records out of a total of three.
Although her high school career was complete after State, Lott continued to train over the next few weeks with her club team – Charger Aquatics – in preparation for the Speedo Sectionals Championship meet held March 17-20 in Federal Way, Wash. Spring Sectionals is usually conducted in short course yards, but the meet was run in long course meters this year to allow participants to qualify for the Olympic Trials, which will be held in Omaha, Neb., at the end of June.
Travelling with 24 other teammates, Lott led the women’s team once again, qualifying for both the Speedo Summer Junior Nationals and the AT&T Winter Nationals meets in three individual events – 100 free (56.78, a 3rd place finish); the 200 free (2:03.97, a 4th place finish); and the 100 back (1:04.50, a 9th place finish). Her time in the 100 free was just .29 seconds off the Olympic Trials qualifying time of 56.49. Lott also broke the New Mexico state swimming records in the 100-meter and 200-meter freestyle swims.
Finishing off the meet, Lott helped the Charger girls’ relay teams break two more New Mexico state swimming records, placing 3rd in the 800-meter free relay (8:36.95), and tying for 1st in the 400-free relay with a team from Portland, Ore., in a time of 3:54.95. Lott scored 40 points total for her team, and Charger Aquatics placed 5th overall out of 59 qualifying teams from the western region of the United States.
Lott’s last chance to achieve the 2016 Olympic Trials standard will happen when she swims at the Gulf Coast Swim Team Summer Invitational meet in Fort Myers, Fla., in mid-June. After that, she will compete at the Summer Junior National meet at the University of Minnesota Aug. 8-12, just days before leaving for the University of Utah to start her college swimming career.
Sarah Lott, right, with her teammates Isabelle Runde, center, and Sydney Schoonover. Courtesy photo
Lott gives credit for all of her swimming successes to her coach, Beverly Leasure (head coach for Charger Aquatics – Los Alamos branch), who has challenged her for the past five years, both in and out of the water, to become the best that she can be.
“I started coaching Sarah the summer before she entered the 8th grade,” Leasure said. “She had a very good and natural feel for the water but she was tall and gangly and wasn’t very fast. It has been a process of her working hard to get better every single year … this shows that hard work pays off. I’ve been in Los Alamos since 1990 and Sarah is the best swimmer to come out of our town … for her to get the opportunity to go to the Olympic Trials and be on deck with our Olympians is a phenomenal experience and she is the only female or male swimmer who has gotten this close.”
Lott’s mother Wendy Lott began swimming competitively when she was 8 and swam all through school and two years of college before she was sidelined by a knee injury.
“I am really proud of Sarah, of her hard work and devotion to the sport,” Wendy said. “I can’t wait to see her contribute to the University of Utah swim team when she starts college this fall.”
Lott’s father is Superintendent Jason Lott of Bandelier National Monument. He swam a little in high school but said he wasn’t very good.
“Wendy has been the guiding influence and mentor for Sarah,” he said. “I joke and tell folks that she gets her raw athleticism from me and her webbed feet from her mother. But I am extremely proud of Sarah … she has already accomplished in her young life more than I ever did and she’s not even out of high school.”
He added that along with being a great swimmer, Lott is “a great student and a good kid.”
“I have a high amount of trust and respect for her … she doesn’t get in trouble, she has a good attitude and she hangs out with other good kids.”
