Alexis Hayes leaves pool after nine successful years

At LHS, sports are widely supported and paid large attention to throughout the school year. We see high school sports in the Tribune nearly every weekend, we hear about it in the bulletin, and we take time out of our school days for pep assemblies to hype up for games such as Battle of the Bridges and Golden Throne. But what about the sports that are rarely given the spotlight? Competitive swimming, for example, isn’t widely recognized not only in Lewiston but in Idaho as a whole.
  Alexis Hayes, a senior from LHS, has been swimming for the Lewis-Clark Neptunes for nine years. But those who don’t know her might never know that Hayes is a top-ranked state and regional swimmer for more than three years. Hayes has ranked top three in the state of Idaho for swimming since she was a freshman, and in the Inland Empire she is seated first or second in every race she swims.
Hayes first realized that swimming was her sport when she was in second grade and was advanced in her swimming lessons. It was her grandmother’s idea to put her on the swim team, and from then on she loved it.
  “I really liked swim lessons, I did dance when I was little cause every kid does dance, and I did soccer. I went on to a soccer traveling team for a year, hated it and didn’t even want to finish out the season, but I needed something to keep me busy and that was something my family wanted me to do and that I really ended up liking,” said Hayes.
The swim team in Lewiston is through the Asotin County Aquatic Center, and its called club swimming since Idaho doesn’t recognize swimming as a school sport.
  “It’s just us and North Dakota where high school associations don’t recognize swimming as a state, so we don’t get any funding and everything we do comes out of our pockets. We don’t get buses to go to meets, so we have to find other transportation, and our coach, we didn’t have enough kids this year to pay our coach, so our coach was a volunteer,” said Hayes.
  This is an issue that hits close to home for Hayes, to see her sport not get as much recognition as the high school sports we have within LHS. The swimmers on this team are extremely dedicated to this sport, with nonexistent funding, hours worth of training and practices, and recognition within the town and schools being not nearly enough.
  Hayes is very dedicated to her swimming, starting when she was eight with one and a half hour practices after school, and when she turned eleven it bumped up to two hour practices every day after school. Swimming isn’t seasonal either, it is an eleven and a half month sport, with a half month off in August.
  A lot of colleges have shown interest in Hayes for her swimming, and at one point she was seriously talking to Boise State University, but she decided halfway through this year that her heart wasn’t in it anymore after nine years and this was going to be her last season for swimming.
  “I’m burnt out from it. It’s not like a seasonal sport, it’s an eleven and a half month sport so that’s a long time. Other sports are seasonal so you don’t get that hatred of it because you do it every day with no breaks from it,” said Hayes.
  The swim season for Hayes ended on November 3rd after state. She placed 3rd in 100 breaststroke and 3rd in 50 freestyle.
 When asked what she loved most about swimming, Hayes said, “You create your own destiny. No matter how hard you work it’s not a team member that’s going to bring you down, it’s how hard you work is where it’s going to put you.”