Photography courtesy Swope family
Senior student athlete helped found the school swimming teams
A sibling rivalry can often bring out the best in an athlete. That proved to be the case with sisters and swimmers Lily and Natalie Swope. They competed for the Annapolis Swim Club for more than a decade and constantly pushed each other. Natalie, two years older than Lily, swam in a different age group.
Then came an opportunity to produce some of the best moments of their careers as student athletes at Indian Creek School. The sisters helped put together the school’s first-ever girls and boys swim teams in 2022. This meant just as much to them as being a member of the same swimming club.
“I am really passionate about swimming,” explains Lily, whose specialty is the butterfly. “I swim a lot. We were in the same (Annapolis program), but never on the same team. It was a great experience for two years of being together.” That was during the 2022–23 and 2023–24 seasons.
Indian Creek Swimming Coach Kelly Boring praises the sisters for their nonstop recruiting effort. It’s all in the impressive numbers.
“I had about 20 swimmers each for the boys and girls,” says Boring, a fourth-year coach. “It was a large number for a team and you [usually] need a long, established history to get that many swimmers.”
The 5-foot-7 Lily, a senior, is clearly Indian Creek’s top swimmer because she is a consistent winner. She’s also one of the best swimmers in the Swope family. Of the three siblings—including brother Danny—she will be the only planning to compete in college.
In the fall, she’ll suit up for Division I University of Cincinnati with an athletic scholarship in hand. Swope also considered the Naval Academy and Davidson University in North Carolina. She committed to the Bearcats in June and signed a National Letter of Intent in mid-November.
Swoop’s dedication and practice schedule put her in position to swim at the next level. She swims 17 hours per week across six days a week, including 6 a.m. practices with her club high school teams.
She carries a 3.8 grade-point average and took seven advanced placement classes. She plans to major in economics with a minor in architecture.
“I wanted the coaching staff to be connected and be like friends to me, and enjoy being with each other,” Swope says. “I also wanted the coaching staff to be on the younger side.”
Boring raves about Swope’s leadership ability—especially with younger swimmers. She would go out of her way to help them. She served as co-captain for two seasons at Indian Creek and swam on the varsity for four years.
Photography courtesy Swope family
“She has a very vested interest in the program,” Boring says. “She wants to leave a good legacy. The other swimmers look up to her for sure.”
Annapolis Swim Club Coach Stephen Henderson adds: “It’s great for younger swimmers to have someone so inspiring.”
Swope swam in the national-caliber Futures Champions meet in Buffalo in March and Eastern Zone Senior Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina, in August, but her biggest accomplishment to date was winning a title in the 50-yard butterfly in the Maryland LSC Senior Swimming Championships in February at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her time of 24.83 set a meet record.
You can call Swope a workhorse. She swims up to seven events for the Annapolis club at these meets. “For high school, she had always been in the mix,” Henderson says of the Maryland event. “A top eight swimmer. But she had never been at that level before. It helped her with recruiting and elevated her profile. It set her up to be looked at by Big 12 schools like Cincinnati.”
Swope also had a stellar career at Indian Creek. She dominated in the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland Championships, winning the title for three consecutive years in the 100 fly, 100 backstroke, and 50 freestyle.
“She is what we would call a late bloomer,” Henderson says. “She developed at the exact right time. I attribute a lot of that development to her consistency.”
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