A lot of women have exploded off the starting blocks and into the pool since Seton Hall first formed a women’s swim team in 1978. There’s been no shortage of BIG EAST champions among them, either. But competing in the NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships was always just out of reach.
That all changed this year, though, when Allie Waggoner got the news she would be the first woman to represent the Pirates at the national championships — in not one, but three events. The 22-year-old senior from Moorestown, New Jersey, qualified to swim in the 1650 freestyle, 500 freestyle and 400 individual medley when the country’s elite college swimmers squared off in Federal Way, Washington, on March 19–22.
As with many watershed moments in life, Waggoner remembers exactly what she was doing when head coach Derek Sapp broke the news: “I was eating breakfast at home when Derek texted me and the assistant coach, Andrew [LeBlanc]: ‘We made it — it’s official!’” Then she did what all true competitors do: she finished her meal and got herself to practice.
Waggoner’s achievement was the result of a years-long commitment to keep improving her times, although it may have been a disappointment that gave her that little extra oomph to make it to the NCAA meet. “I just missed it my junior year,” she recalls. Instead of sinking under the weight of dashed hopes, though, she says, “I realized that if I kept training really hard over the summer, and putting the work in from the beginning of my senior year, it was definitely doable.”
Coach Sapp agreed, and was quick to assure her it wasn’t a pipe dream. He recalls telling her, “‘There is a very good chance, if you keep working the way you do, and keep doing what you’re doing, that you’ll make it’” to the NCAA championship meet. “She fully bought into it, and had the confidence in herself to keep pushing.”
Quiet confidence and a willingness to lead by example are traits that inspired him to tap Waggoner as team captain. It’s a style that suits her.
“I think that’s the best way to lead,” she confirms. “If you’re just telling someone to work hard and you’re not doing it yourself, what’s the point in that? When we’re in the pool, pushing each other, working on harder intervals — I’m doing that myself.”
Similarly, the reward for hard work extends beyond her own achievements to her teammates — and Seton Hall swimmers to come. “It’s awesome for the program. It shows, ‘Hey, look, we can do it,’” Sapp says. “You’ve got to find the right person that really believes in that and buys into it. Maybe this is cliché, but Allie gets it and understands it.”
The idea that her accomplishments could have a lasting, positive effect on her team and on Seton Hall is, in fact, its own reward to Waggoner. “The swim team, the athletic department, the school in general, have given me so many opportunities. To be able to do this and kind of give back — it means a lot.”
While she may have touched the wall for the last time as a Pirate, Waggoner’s not done competing. This summer she hopes to take part in the U.S. trials for the World Championship, and also keep “giving back” by sharing what she’s learned with younger swimmers as a teacher and a coach.
Come August, Waggoner will embark on her post-college life by putting her newly minted degree in communications, with a minor in public relations, to good use in a year-long postgraduate internship with Disney. And she’ll do it with the satisfaction of having set a new standard, on a national stage, for the community she found in South Orange.
“That was something I really wanted for myself, my teammates and my coaches,” she says. “But, also, that was something I also really wanted for Seton Hall.”
Harris Fleming is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.
