From Bronze To Gold. Westie’s achievement in swimming.

From+Bronze+To+Gold.+Westies+achievement+in+swimming.

Christy Armstrong, Staff Writer

Darlene Westie has been swimming since she was six months old, but it wasn’t until she was six years old that she began to swim competitively in a bronze level swim team.

“Well I swim a lot, last I counted I spent at least 13 hours in the pool this past week.” Westie said, recalling how she was planning to go to college on a swimming scholarship, and plan to be swimming for a long time.

Westie’s swimming career began when she started to out do and outperform all her old swimming buddies in the pool. Her parents also decided they’d rather not pay for her to go to the pool if all she was doing was splashing around a little, and she was transferred onto a beginning level swim team.

“I got transferred into a bronze competitive swimming team and I did my first meet and that was when I fell in love,” Westie said. “I mean I’ve always been competitive but that was when I really started to use my competitive nature for something.”

Currently Westie is on a gold level swimming team, having spent 2 years on bronze before moving onto silver, and moved up to gold at 8th grade.