By Sarah Turner, Sports editor 

Swimming is an unforgiving sport. Few athletes understand that better than Keara McGee, a senior on Montevallo’s women’s swim team. The countless early wakeups, the dry land sessions and pushing your body to the limit of its abilities with often little reward can break you down. 

But sometimes, that hard work does pay off. And it certainly has for McGee.  

Last winter, McGee became the first-ever female swimmer in program history to qualify for the NCAA National Swimming Championships. But her journey to success has been anything but ordinary. 

McGee started swimming after watching the Americans dominate at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where she was heavily inspired by Katie Ledecky’s performances. “I saw Katie Ledecky swim and I was like, ‘Oh, I want to do that, that looks so cool,’” she said.  

McGee finally gave the sport a chance, something her dad had encouraged for years after other sports never quite clicked for her. 

McGee started much later than most of her teammates, but it didn’t slow her drive. 

“[Swimming] being an individual sport was a really big thing for me because I’m more of an independent person,” McGee explained, “It was a good sport for me to kind of throw my whole self into.”  

After having some success in high school at the state level, McGee heavily debated what her next steps in the sport were. 

“I actually didn’t even know if I wanted to swim in college,” she said, “I was kind of on the fence since I had started so late.” 

She said what ultimately drove her decision was thinking about the alternatives if she didn’t pursue sports in college, and none of them sounded that appealing to her. She explained that since she isn’t extremely outgoing, being on a team would give her an automatic group of friends, which was something that was important in her decision to go to a small school as well. This all pointed her to Montevallo.  

Her first two years with the program, McGee saw a decent level of success, dropping time in her events both years. But then, major changes hit the program in 2024.  

Both of these changes combined made a perfect storm for the team’s success. Lori brought brand new life and energy into the program, and the conference move gave the Falcons competition at a level more suited to the program, which is only in its sixth year of existence.  

“[Lori] was such a breath of fresh air for us, and I think having the competition we did last year just made us more energetic too,” McGee said. 

McGee said that competing at the national level had always been a big goal of hers, but she really didn’t realize just how hard it was going to be to qualify.  

The Conference Carolinas swim championships were held at the end of February in Cary, North Carolina, and McGee explained that competing at that meet was one of the best moments of her swim career.  

“Everyone was up cheering for everyone’s races, we’ve never had that before,” she said, “So honestly I feel like that was a big motivator for me to go faster.” 

In the 100-yard butterfly, McGee’s signature event, she swam 56.04 seconds, an NCAA B-Cut time, in the preliminary round. This meant she had hit a standard that could possibly send her to nationals, but it wasn’t a guarantee. 

Later that day, she came back for the finals, where she was a heavy favorite to win the event. She said she felt a good pressure from her teammates all being there to watch and cheer her on.  

But when she finished the race and looked up at her time, she saw something she didn’t expect. She had swam 54.77 seconds, which was more than fast enough to get her into nationals. And also earn a Conference title, as well as the Conference and Montevallo record. 

“I touched the wall and I literally looked up and I started bawling and crying,” she said, “It was so surreal.” 

She said there are photos of her – still in tears – rushing over to teammates to celebrate her accomplishment. 

McGee now had to turn her attention to the national championships, where, luckily, she was joined by teammate Aleksei Kolesnikov who represented the men’s program. She said that having him by her side kept her from getting overwhelmed. 

On competition day, McGee explained that she was probably in her head too much, which caused her to not perform as well as she would’ve liked. She didn’t swim any events before the 100-yard butterfly, something she had never done before, which threw her off. That, along with not having her teammates there, was a difficult adjustment. 

“It was definitely hard going from conference and having all of those people around that were so loud and like cheering and screaming for you and talking to teammates in the locker room before, to going to having just Aleksei,” McGee said.  

She ended up finishing in 31st-place in the 100-yard butterfly and 47th-place in the 100-yard freestyle.  

This year, McGee hopes to return to the national championship pool, improve on her 31st-place finish, and compete in more events.  

“I do want to get conference champion 100 fly again, but I’m not too concerned about breaking my conference record now, I think it’s pretty good,” she added with a smile. 

She has all the tools to do so, and her approach to the season is now better suited in order to see more success at the national meet. 

But after her season concludes in March, McGee knows that the growth she has experienced as a student-athlete during her time at Montevallo will keep her set for life.  

“I’ve been a lot more confident in who I am as a person throughout swimming here,” said McGee. She explained that her confidence in herself has translated over to her swimming, which is why she saw so much success last season.  

So as McGee takes to the pool for one last round, expect her to leave it all in the water—one last time.