LEWISTON — Few swimmers who have dipped their toe into a pool for Edward Little have been more motivated than junior Melissa Paione.

“She is incredibly driven in the pool,” Edward Little coach Scott Morrison said.

The modest Paione isn’t sure what motivates her. She theorizes that she’s driven to get better and to strive for perfection.

“I don’t want to be in the pool three hours a day and not improve on something,” Paione said. “I just constantly move forward. I don’t know what drives me. I just enjoy swimming a lot.”

It took a little time for Paione to realize how much she enjoyed swimming. A pool prodigy at the age of 5, she stopped for a few years to play basketball. When she returned, no one was happier to see her back in the pool than Morrison, who had coached her when she was little.

“If you watch her swim, it doesn’t look like she’s moving at all, but she is incredibly fast,” said Morrison, who compared Paione to recent EL swimming stars Andrew and Tim Brodsky. “She’s incredibly gifted.”

So gifted that breaking the school’s breaststroke record her freshman year seemed like a mere formality. She established a new mark of 1:09.63, and was named the Sun Journal’s girls’ swimmer of the year.

The goal her sophomore year was to improve as an all-around swimmer. She stayed away from her specialty at dual meets and focused on other events, particularly the freestyle and individual medley.

 “We wanted to show the college coaches that are starting to look at her that she’s not just a breaststroker. She can swim wherever she wants,” Morrison said.

Paione still dominated the 100 breaststroke at KVACs. She also won the 500 free and was named swimmer of the meet.

Repeating the feat at states proved to be a daunting challenge. Paione went into the meet knowing she wasn’t going to get much of a break between events.

“It was kind of like of wild card because the 500 is right next to the breaststroke, so not a lot of people saw that coming,” she said.

She ended up placing third in Class A in the breaststroke and fourth in the 500 freestyle

“That really showed the mettle of Melissa Paione,” Morrison said. “The 200 freestyle relay and the 100 back(stroke) are in between those events, so that’s a very short amount of time. I think people were pretty impressed to see that she had the kind of stamina to do that.”

Paione was also part of EL’s first medley relay team in over a decade to reach the podium, finishing sixth.

Her plans for this season are still somewhat up in the air. She’d like another relay medal, and she will continue in the breaststroke, with hopes of improving on her record (more on that in a moment).

The Red Eddies open their season on Friday at Cony with St. Dom’s, and while Paione admits that her preference is to work on her individual medley by getting faster in the backstroke and butterfly, she and Morrison are still mulling their options.

“I think this meet coming up is kind of the decider,” she said. “I would like to try to focus on getting some records. This year, I want to focus on the 200 IM I think, because it’s a mixture of all the strokes put together. But other than that, I really don’t have a preference.”

An excellent all-around athlete and honor student, Paione plays soccer and softball for EL in addition to club swimming for the Twin Cities Swim Team.

While she’s quick to help her teammates with their starts, flip turns and breaststroke technique, she decided not to run for the team’s captaincy, saying it’s an honor that should go to seniors.

Paione will probably be a captain next year, though, when among other new swimmers, her sister Olivia will be joining she and brother Andrew, a sophomore, on the team.

It is already serving as more motivation. One of Melissa’s goals this year is to shave about three seconds off her breaststroke time.

“I want to try to lower that down a little bit so she doesn’t get it,” Paione said with a laugh. “She’s smaller than I am, but she’s really fast. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop her, but it will be interesting.”

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