Colony swimmer signs with Ouachita Baptist University

PALMER — Colony High School senior Sierra Kinworthy has come a long way in her swimming career.

Kinworthy signed with the Ouachita Baptist University Tigers Wednesday afternoon in the presence of her parents, Bill and Rebecca Kinworthy, her coach, Wil Fernandez, and Colony High Athletic Director Mike Boyd. She received both an academic scholarship and a separate athletic scholarship to swim for the Tigers, covering almost all her college expenses, she said.

Sierra said at the ceremony that both her mother and brother Kristian have athletic ties to the Arkansas school as a former tennis player (1990) and a former swimmer (2010), respectively.

Sierra laughed, she said, when her acceptance letter referred to her mother as “Becky,” and the professor she spoke with on her recruitment visit remembered her former student well.

“When you’re a parent and your kids all do the same thing, it goes a lot smoother,” Sierra’s mom said by phone.

Sierra’s dad said they weren’t going to push their kids to do anything they didn’t want to do, however, so when Rebecca first asked Sierra if she wanted to try out for the local swim club as a 6-year-old, it was a genuine question.

Sierra’s “yes” was hers, and hers alone.

Her first swimming experience was when she went snorkeling in the Philippines at just 3 years old, Sierra said. Her family lived there for almost four years. When her dad’s bid to move overseas as a FedEx pilot was up, the family moved back to Arkansas, where Sierra had been born, and she joined her brother as a swimmer for the Aquakids club team at age 7. She later became a member of the Conway High School swim team, and after moving to Alaska was named Most Valuable Swimmer last year and a team captain this year for the Colony Knights.

Perhaps her most significant accomplishment in swimming — outside of school competitions — was the 10-mile open-water Swim the Suck race in Chattanooga, Tennessee. At 16 years old, she was the youngest competitor of 77 selected for the “super high-profile” race, she said, which hosted swimmers from all over the world — NCAA Division I All-Americans, Olympians, and people who had swum the English channel were among the participants.

“That’s beyond my comprehension,” Boyd said, of Sierra’s 10-mile swim, at the signing.

Sierra finished eighth in the race overall, fifth in the women’s division with a time of 3 hours, 31 minutes and 34 seconds.

The winner was an Olympic gold medalist.

It was long, it “went really well,” and “the competition was super stiff” was all she said in reference to the race, this time around.

She said she’d do it again — she has her sights set on an approximately 8-mile race between two of the Hawaiian islands, she said — but college competition is her main goal.

“I think for the majority of club swimmers that’s kind of the overall goal,” she said. “Everyone shoots for the Olympics but everyone really wants to swim in college.”

Sierra said she was too young at the time of the 10-mile race to be recruited by college coaches, and when Division I coaches did eventually contact her, they couldn’t compete with the deal she found at Ouachita (a Division II school).

She looked at UAF and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy too, but Ouachita was a no-brainer.

“Every school has a phenomenal team and phenomenal academics,” she said, of the schools she looked into, “but I really liked the atmosphere of the team (at Ouachita).”

Even though her brother has been out of college and out of Arkansas for four years, Sierra said he still talks to his old college teammates and meets up with them during their breaks from school or work, and she feels just as comfortable around them.

“It’s such a close-knit group,” she said. “They’re all like one big family.”

Sierra said she wouldn’t mind going to a bigger school — Ouachita is roughly 3,000 students — it “just happens” that all the schools she really liked were smaller.

Her most recent high school accolades include a third-place finish in the final 500-yard freestyle event at the state championship meet this year and a school record of 5:06.65 in a preliminary heat of the same event in the state meet. She has been a top performer for the Knights all season in the 200-yard medley and freestyle relays and the 100-yard backstroke as well.

“Not many people know that she got up at 4:30 in the morning almost every week day to practice,” Sierra’s mom mentioned on the phone Thursday. “She worked on her own all season long to make her goals.”

Sierra said she’d like to make it to the NCAA Division II National Championship as a freshman at Ouachita next year — probably in the 1,000-meter or 1-mile freestyle — but her main goal is to be an asset to her future team.

“I’d like to help my team out in any way that I can, be a big team player,” she said. “Even though it’s an individual sport we all have to work together to get a win or a conference title.”

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.