It is not always about the medal, or the ribbon, or the personal best time that highlights a swimmer’s journey into the state championships.
Sometimes it is a personal challenge.
A swimmer not willing to say a career is over despite the pain and hardship of injury.
Juneau-Douglas High School junior Sarah Mertz, age 16, qualified for the Alaska School Activities Association state championships as the fourth-place finisher in the Region V meet in Sitka last weekend.
A fourth place finish is not an automatic bid and Mertz barely made the cut with the 13th best time overall in the state. More important is how she got there, after taking almost a year off due to a shoulder injury.
“To be able to perform at this level now is a feel good story,” Glacier Swim Club coach Scott Griffith said. “Three years of pretty much fighting injury … most people would have been done by now. Seeing specialists, pretty much stopping swimming for almost a year for therapy. When a swimmer leaves the pool for a year, usually they don’t come back. She deserves her time now, seeing all her hard work and knowing it was all worth it. The determination to stick with it and do as much as she could and to not do too much. She was patient.”
Mertz first began swimming at age 6 with the Glacier Swim Club.
She has no club records.
“My older sister Haley was a swimmer,” Mertz said. “I wanted to do everything that my sister did. Once she started swimming, as soon as I was old enough I joined.”
The first sign of a shoulder discomfort came in the seventh grade.
“It got worse throughout my seventh and eighth grade year,” Mertz said. “I was doing PT (physical therapy) to lessen the pain and get better.”
Mertz continued to swim GSC into middle school and then into high school.
Her physical therapy was changed to chiropractic visits.
She made the Crimson Bears team as a freshman and sophomore but never set a state qualifying time.
“Through my freshman and sophomore year it was everything I could do to hold myself together,” Mertz said. “Just trying to get through it.”
Mertz barely made it through the Region V championships in Petersburg last season.
The pain was so bad Mertz had an MRI after regions and was told by doctors she needed to stop swimming.
Overuse and repetitiveness had led to two small tears in both rotator cuffs and they had progressively worsened.
“It kind of felt like somebody was stabbing me with knives,” Mertz said. “A handful of knives. I had to let that heal.”
Mertz would be forced to take 10 months away from the sport she had loved since her older sister taught her how to put on a swim cap and goggles.
“It was sad because a lot of my friends were on the swim team,” Mertz said. “And that is when I see them. To be gone from the pool so long, I mean … it was kind of like home. My parents spend so much time here, it is a family sport for my family.”
In early November of last year rehabilitation started, or rather rested. Rest was first prescribed, then incremental buildups.
“It was a lot of little tedious exercises,” Mertz said. “I didn’t see the point in them at all. I was like, ‘Why am I doing this?’”
Mertz kept on. Six days a week. The tiny exercises and stretching built into weight training. Physical therapists, chiropractors were as much a part of her life as friends and parents.
“These words on the page don’t do justice to her commitment to get herself back in shape,” father Max Mertz said in an email interview. “Swimming is a muscle memory sport and being out of the water for 10 months is forever, especially for a teenager.”
Mertz was allowed to get back in the pool in July. Now her six days a week were water based, plus dry land training three days a week.
“I was swimming with the least amount of pain that I could remember,” Mertz said. “Since I was in sixth or seventh grade. When high school season started I knew it was all worth it. I had almost given up after last year, it had hurt so bad. But when practices started, and I could do it, and I was not in pain it was worth it and I was having fun.”
JDHS coach Seth Cayce was in awe of her dedication.
“I do know that she was in a lot of pain last year,” Cayce said. “There was one time at the beginning of this year where she got out of the pool and was visibly in pain. That was the first meet of the season and she hasn’t had that since. She dropped a lot of time in the backstroke this season. Shoulders are huge for swimming. If you have shot shoulders, you are not going to have anything really. The fact that she can now swim a majority of time pain free is huge and it has paid off for her.”
Mertz’s fastest 100 backstroke time was in the seventh grade. She hit a 1:05.01.
This past Saturday she swam a 1:05.11 at regions and will be seeded 13th in a field of 18 at the ASAA Championships in Anchorage’s Bartlett High School pool. She will join 13 JDHS teammates and seven from Thunder Mountain.
“It felt nice to be back down to my fastest time,” Mertz said. “It kind of feels like I won a medal … I mean the times are great and placing high is fun, too, but to just be having fun and not having any pain is the best thing ever.”
Juneau-Douglas High School junior Sarah Mertz during Crimson Bears swim practice at Augustus Brown Pool on Tuesday.
