Elizabeth Fleming has won the high-point trophy four straight
years at the CVAL Short Course Championships
HOLLISTER
Somewhat surprisingly, Elizabeth Fleming can’t recall the first time she went swimming or how her passion in the pool suddenly developed.
Those details are kind of murky.
“But she’s always been natural in the water,” said Fleming’s father, Peter. “When we had the pool put in [the backyard,] she would dive in and pick quarters up from the bottom.”
Asked Elizabeth, who was not able to recall her quarter-diving adventures, “Did I get to keep them?”
Although her initial remembrances surrounding swimming may come second hand, Fleming’s first accomplishments in the pool can be recalled almost as easily as her most recent accolades, not that she would forget. She has practically every swimming medal and trophy displayed somewhere in her Hollister bedroom, including a makeshift bulletin board of first- and second-place medals and ribbons that hangs noticeably crooked by a single nail, perhaps due to the sheer weight of winning.
With a little help from her father, Fleming said, “If you see it, you’ll be it. But you have to take action to achieve it.”
Fleming has a way of turning action into accolades, first-place times into record-setting performances, despite her swimming career being just four years old. Having first earned high-point honors at the Coast Valley Aquatics League Short Course Championships when she was 4, Fleming has since earned the top award four years running, with her most recent high-point trophy coming last weekend at the Morgan Hill Sports Complex.
“It was kind of hard because I was 4,” said the 8-year-old Fleming, who now competes for the Monterey Bay Swim Club. “It’s easier now, more experience.”
Read the full story in this Friday’s edition of The Weekend Pinnacle.
