Even though Friday Harbor does not have a high school swim team, three FHHS swimmers are active in interscholastic competition.

The three swimmers are Jocelyn Roberts, Tenley Nelson and Sara Sanchez. They practice at San Juan Island Fitness under the coaching of Tim Collins, and they participate on the Anacortes High School swim team.

Collins worked with parents and the athletic directors of the two school districts to arrange this solution to the problem of how these local swimmers could participate in school-sanctioned competition.

Roberts, who specializes in the butterfly and backstroke events, had been on a swim team in Arizona before the family moved to San Juan Island. For a while she ferried over to Anacortes to compete on a club team, but this required her to spend too much time riding the ferries. Nelson, a freestyle and breaststroke specialist, had been swimming prior to the family’s move to the island from Cheney and faced the same dilemma as Roberts.

The solution was for the girls to train locally and ferry over to the mainland to compete with the AHS team. Sanchez is an exchange student from Spain who is getting her first exposure to American high school competitive swimming.