Scorcz excels in pool, classroom at Glass

Balancing sports and studies is a challenge for most student athletes.

E.C. Glass sophomore swimmer Maddy Skorcz is no exception, though she is exceptional at both.

Since she began swimming year-round with the Lynchburg YMCA team as a seventh-grader, Skorcz has thrived in the fast lane in both the pool and the classroom.

“I’m definitely very competitive with my grades as well as swimming,” said Skorcz, who has applied for the Governor’s School at Heritage. “I started out (swimming) doing it for fun and now that it’s competitive, it’s even more fun.”

The Hilltopper sophomore has posted her team’s fastest times in all but the 50 and 100 free and the 100 backstroke, which is senior Frances Carey’s strongsuit.

“The boys in the school refer to her in a complimentary way as a beast,” Glass first-year coach Jerry Salmon said. “I would be very surprised if over the next two years, she’s not a state champion.”

That might be more likely to happen after Glass is reclassified as a Group AA school and joins the Seminole District next year after going for its ninth consecutive boys and girls sweep in the Western Valley District swim championships this winter.

“She’s talented enough to qualify for the Group AAA state in the 100 fly and 500 free, which she is already (Northwest) regionally qualified in, or the 200 IM and 100 breaststroke,” Salmon said.

On a team that features senior standouts Carey and Priscilla Chong, who is applying to Ivy League schools, Skorcz fits right in.

“All the seniors are great,” said Skorcz, who swims the butterfly on the opening 200 medley relay after Carey swims the back and Chong the freestyle, with fellow senior Kendall Good or her younger sister Niki doing the breast stroke. “They’re so nice to everybody.

“Frances is a very good actress and is in a lot of school plays,” she added. “Percy is really smart, like her sister,” Jamie Chong, now a freshman at Cornell, where she also swims.

After earning the freshman class award in advanced world history at Glass last fall, with a recommendation from Salmon, also her ninth-grade teacher, Skorcz is taking her first AP class in European history this year.

She spends 22 hours per week swimming, not counting competition, and still finds time to get her homework done.

Like most of her classmates at Glass, Skorcz had two exams on Wednesday, two on Thursday and has two more today, before the Hilltoppers meet Liberty and William Fleming at the Jamerson Family YMCA tonight at 6:30.

Skorcz swims for Oakwood Country Club’s team in the summer and the Lynchburg YMCA travel team year-round.

“Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day might be the only days she’s not practicing with somebody,” Salmon said.

“She has one of the highest attendance (marks on the team),” Lynchburg YMCA coach T.J. Liston added.

Skorcz is equally determined to achieve her Group AAA state and YMCA national qualifying times in any or all of her seven individual events and two relays as she is to receive straight As in school.

A distance swimmer, her best event in high school may be the 500-yard freestyle, with her personal record time of 5 minutes, 14 seconds a little more than a second off the Group AAA state meet qualifying time.

She’s even stronger in the 1,650 free for her YMCA team.

Skorcz needs a time of 17 minutes, 53 seconds to make the YMCA spring national cut. She swam a personal best 17:54 in the YMCA state championship meet held Jan. 11 at the Jamerson YMCA.

“She’s one of those kids who’s right on the bubble,” Liston said. “In the 1,650, she just missed it. The last six or seven minutes of the 17-minute race, it was just gut-wrenching to watch.”

She is not quite as fast yet, but has similar potential as Jefferson Forest sophomore and Lynchburg YMCA teammate Susanna White, a Group AA state champion as a freshman who opted not to swim for the Cavaliers this winter.

“Susanna’s way ahead of her because she started swimming so much earlier,” Liston said. “She’d been swimming for three to four years by the time Maddy started.”

The two don’t often race head-to-head.

“I’m more of a distance swimmer and she’s more of a sprinter so we learn from each other,” Skorcz said.