LEWISTON — Scott Morrison, the coach of the Edward Little swim team, welcomes any swimmer from a school that doesn’t have a high school team.
This year, he has three swimmers from three different schools who will be partaking in the high school swim season. Jenna Boucher of Leavitt, Garrett Perron of Lisbon and Ellena Frumiento of Hebron Academy are the trio, along with the St. Dom’s swim team practicing and going to meets with Edward Little this season.
Morrison is always happy to give individual swimmers a place to hone their skills.
“If these kids want to swim, I want to provide that opportunity,” Morrison said.
Morrison said the process is very simple for these kids to be with the EL swim team. He usually hears from the parents first, with a middle school-aged child that might be with the Y team or the Tiger Sharks, and may see Morrison before one of his practices and make mention that their kid swims, but the high school that they are going to attend doesn’t have a high school team. He will let Edward Little Athletic Director Todd Sampson know, and then Sampson will get in contact with the other school’s AD to come up with an agreement.
Leavitt and EL have had a longstanding agreement, which helped Boucher swim at the varsity level in the winter when she started out as freshman three years ago.
“Going into it, I didn’t know if I didn’t want to swim competitively because Leavitt didn’t (have their own team),” Boucher said. “Scott had an offer that I couldn’t pass up. I was like: ‘I have to do this.’ I love swimming.”
Perron, a sophomore, did talk to Lisbon AD Eric Hall on what he needed to do to swim at the high school level before the start of his freshman year.
“I had to talk to him to see what it would take for me to get there,” Perron said. “It was an easy process, filling out some paperwork and I was able to start swimming (with EL).”
He started swimming at the Kennebec Valley YMCA, and he didn’t feel like basketball would be in his future at the high-school level.
A change in her club team schedule moving to the YWCA in Lewiston allowed Frumiento, who’s a junior at Hebron, to compete at the high-school level for the first time.
“I have been swimming on the Twin Cities swim team since I was eight,” Frumiento said. “This year, since we switched to this pool, I was able to do both.”
Morrison believes it will be the first time in 20 or so years that a swimmer from Hebron Academy will compete at the high school state meet. Frumiento is also excited to see what the differences between a high school and a club meet are.
When Boucher first joined, there were four other girls that were also swimming for Leavitt, but they were all seniors. The past three years, she’s been the lone Hornet swimmer, although some her classmates have known her as the school’s only swimmer and some have shown interest, but never put their money where their mouth is.
“They do, they are like: ‘You are the only person on the swim team, right?’ I am like, ‘Yup.’” Boucher said. “They make jokes sometimes, like ‘I will do swimming,’ but they never do.”
Just like Boucher, Perron walks the halls at Lisbon as the school’s lone swimmer.
“Some of them find it cool that I am the only one, some of them want to come out, but they can’t because they have other sports,” Perron said. “… Being the only one is kind of a cool feeling because you got the title of being the Lisbon swimmer.”
Frumiento said some of her close friends knows she’s swimming for Hebron, but the majority of the school doesn’t know.
All three say it’s not weird practicing with their opposition, they just see the entire group as one big team.
“It’s really not that awkward,” Perron said. “You are still basically a part of the team, but a regular (meet) you are still competing against them at the end.”
While it’s just been a couple of weeks with her new team, Frumiento doesn’t think it’s strange, since she knows a lot of the swimmers anyway.
“A lot of the kids I practice with also swim club, so I know a lot of them,” she said.
Jenna Boucher, left, of Leavitt Area High School, Garrett Perron of Lisbon High School and Ellena Frumiento of Hebron Academy swim for their respective schools, but train together. (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)
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