It’s an attitude that the team truly prides itself on. Fry’s Spring Beach Club takes an open armed approach when it comes to the roster for its Jefferson Swim League. If you’re an expert swimmer or novice or even stepping into the pool for the first time, you are more than welcome to join them. It’s of little surprise that this approach has netted the team 300 members including 20 scholarship swimmers. And of those hundreds of swimmers, Jessica Friel stands out as a shining example of the team’s welcoming approach.
Jessica’s parents were looking for an activity to help Jessica, who is developmentally delayed, to work on her core and coordination. Sports like skiing and horse back riding have been great activities for her, but last year the idea of joining the JSL came up. It was an idea, but certainly not one the Friels thought would work.
“We joined Fry’s Spring last year and we didn’t ever think that we were going to be able to do that,” said Cathy Friel, Jessica’s mother. “We talked to a bunch of different teams and Beth Bullard. She said, ‘Oh, we’re all about accommodating special needs kids.’ They said they had done it before and that it was no problem.”
When Jessica first started last year, treading water and keeping her head above the water was a battle. Now more than a year later she’s able to swim the 25 and 50 meter freestyle races thanks in large part to David Chambers from Charlottesville High who has, for all intents and purposes, become Jessica’s personal swim coach.
“She got in the water and bonded with David immediately,” Cathy said. “And even though he’s moving up the ranks on the team that relationship has continued.”
Jessica’s accumulated a significant fan base, and when she’s in the pool at a meet, she soaks it up.
“She picked up on that whenever she races people cheer really hard for her,” Cathy said. “So sometimes she likes to stop and look at all her fans, swim some more and as the cheers get louder she’ll pop back up and stop again for a second. When she gets out of the pool, she’s just really proud — you can see it in her body language — she’s standing up straight and is so proud of herself.”
The feeling is mutual for the rest of the Fry’s Spring team — they’re all proud of her. As a whole, the team rallies around the welcoming, laid-back attitude.
“It’s pretty hard to be sad around this team,” said Michaela Foky.
Foky comes from a long line of talented swimmers. Her older sybilings, Daniel and Annie, have both standouts for the Charlottesville High swim team. A rising junior at CHS, Michaela is following in their footsteps and swims the 50 free, butterfly and backstroke for Fry’s Spring. She’s one of the Dolphins’ top swimmers, but she’s not on the team for the purpose of competing at the highest level possible — for so many in the JSL, the summer is supposed to be a time to unwind and relax.
“I really feel like goal of this team isn’t to go out and win and be the best,” Foky said. “It’s a lot more about being like a family, having fun and really just getting down to what’s great about this sport.”
Fry’s Spring still has a number of talented swimmers, young and old. Foky, Nathaniel Bullard, Gabriella Freckman and Haley Arata often carry the flag for the team. There are also some stronger swimmers in the younger ranks, like Lamont Ried and Mackenzie Lawson. Reid swims the 25 free, fly and back. Lawson swims the 100 IM, 50 fly and 50 breastroke for the Dolphins.
“I really enjoy swimming for this team because the coaches look at what you’re best at and then ask you if you like it,” Lawson said. “If you do then you get to do a lot of it. I like the breastroke and so I that’s what I do.
When it comes to coaching the Fry Spring’s bunch, Jill Robertson tries to keep it simple and sticks to the basics.
“We just focus on proper techniques,” Robertson said. “We work on flip turns, starts and stroke rather than swimming the yard. The big thing is for the kids to learn four strokes legally.”
In many ways, the actual process of becoming better swimmers is a bonus, because when it comes to the Dolphins they’re just trying to keep the team open to anyone and everyone and take it easy — and that’s not a hard sell.
