The young woman who brought home Bonners Ferry's first Idaho State swimming trophy November 2, and the first and only Bonners Ferry Badger to compete in swimming, is a remarkably poised young athlete who is using her sport to fuel her dreams, and also to propel her into her future.
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| Julia Cummings, center, has fun training, but works hard and keeps focused. |
While competing at ever higher levels is a goal that keeps her working hard, her ulterior motive and focus is much more pragmatic; what she truly hopes to get for all the years of training and competing, she said, is a full-ride scholarship to the Christian liberal arts Whitworth University, Spokane, where she hopes to swim for the Pirates while pursuing a degree in nursing.
"They have a good swim team and a good nursing program," she said simply. "It's good to work hard to achieve a dream, but college is more realistic."
Her hope, she said, is to become a midwife or a nurse, and to help others.
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Her family, including younger siblings Sara, who runs cross country at Boundary County Middle School, Samantha, a second grader who loves dance, and Matthew, who attends kindergarten, moved to Boundary County two years ago from Columbia, South Carolina, where Julia began swimming at age eight.
Once here, she said, she and her parents found the Sandpoint West Athletic Club, where she can train under coach Mike Brosnahan, and where, in the off season when she isn't swimming for her school, she competes with the club's Sandpoint Sharks swim team.
But swim sessions there are at 4 p.m., too early for her to attend classes as a Badger, with the four day school week and extended daily schedule.
To overcome that obstacle, Julia turned to dual enrollment; she's a Badger attending classes at Bonners Ferry High School in the mornings, then going home to study as a student in the Idaho Virtual Academy (IDVA), a publically-funded and fully accredited online charter school that lets her fulfill her class load to gain the credits she'll need to graduate, while giving her the flexibility to swim most every afternoon.
And she's a very dedicated swimmer, Brosnahan says, and fast.
"She hardly ever misses a practice or gets here late," he said, "and she comes focused on what she needs to do. And she is fast in the water!"
But that doesn't explain how one dedicated young athlete became recognized as the first swimmer in Badger history, and in a school that doesn't even have a pool!
"At the beginning of the year, my parents and I got on the agenda at a school board meeting and we asked the board," Julia said. "They said yes."
Well, maybe not quite that easily. Julia was able, with her parents, to outline how it could work. During the Idaho school swim season, she would train and travel with the Sandpoint Bulldogs, but wearing a Badger uniform. Her enrollment as a part time Badger and part time IDVA student would give her the ability to balance her academic load with the rigors of her sport.
The proposal was so logical and reasonable, of course the School District 101 Board agreed. And the trophy Julia brought home for the Badger trophy case, for winning the individual 1A-3A title in the 100 back stroke at the Idaho State Swim Meet in Boise with a time of 1:04.49, was not only a testament to her athletic achievement and ability, but a vindication for the board in listening to and believing in this poised, confident and talented young woman.