February 12, 2008
ATHLETICS
Career winding down, Thiel may be just beginning to fulfill her potential
As Meghan Thiel climbed out of the pool at the Navy Invitational Feb. 2, one of her younger teammates made a seemingly innocent comment in passing.
“He said, ‘So Meghan, this is your last duel (meet),’” Thiel, a senior, recalls. “It’s been very, very emotional. Every meet I’ve been to I basically start crying, because I’m not going to do it again.”
Thiel, 23, wears her passion for her sport on her bathing suit strap. It is that passion, and her dedication to feeding it, that has made Thiel one of the fastest Eagle women ever to take to the water. She owns school records in the 200, 500, 1,000 and 1,650 meter freestyle, and has represented AU at the NCAA Championships. And all that just may be the tip of the iceberg.
“She’s focused and extremely bright, and she has the skills,” Coach Mark Davin says. “I still believe she has potential that she hasn’t reached.”
That’s a scary thought for her opponents. Thiel has spent many of her waking hours in the water ever since first diving into a pool as a kid.
“I’ve been swimming forever,” she says. “I’ve loved the pool since day one. I just love the feeling in the water. You really don’t hear too much, but when you have somebody next to you, there is a connection there. You can see them, you can sense them.”
Thiel grew up Arlington, Va., and started her serious training at age 14, but success was anything but immediate.
“We were doing a 200 freestyle, and other people in my lane were doing breaststroke,” she says. “An [AU] alum passed me. That’s pretty pathetic. I was basically down there, low on the totem pole and struggling. I was embarrassed, and that was motivation for me to really make sure that I belonged there.”
Training with Curl-Burke Swim Club at AU, Thiel didn’t stay slow for long. By the next year she was competing at the U.S. Olympic trials in Indianapolis, and four years later, after graduating from high school, she took a year off to train for the ’04 trials. When it was time to pick a college, Thiel didn’t stray far from home.
“When I was with Curl we got to train here, and I’ve always gotten to see how AU trains and how the team is,” she says. “The common denominator that I’ve seen here is it’s very much like a family. That was a huge motivation to come here.”
Her decision clearly paid off; her progression has been palpable. As a freshman in 2005, she broke the pool, meet, and AU records in the 1,650 meter freestyle and was named the Patriot League Championships Female Co-Swimmer of the Meet. The following season she added Patriot League Female Swimmer of the Year and Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards to her résumé while becoming AU’s first female swimmer to qualify for the NCAA Championships since 1994. Last year she recorded her third-straight 500 and 1,650 freestyle conference championships.
“Meghan was fast before she got here,” Davin says. “She’s had a chance with us to see a lot more video and get personal feedback and do things like weight training. But her work ethic is the first thing you notice.”
A double major in language and area studies and secondary education, Thiel, a fluent German speaker, hopes to one day teach the language in high school, then possibly college. She has one more year of academic study left, but no more athletic eligibility, so she plans to help out by coaching her beloved team.
Heading into a critical four-day stretch beginning Feb. 21, Thiel is pleased with the way she’s been swimming, but knows past success guarantees nothing in the future. She’ll have to be at her best during the three-day Patriot League Championships and Olympic trial qualifying event the very next day. Regardless of what numbers appear on the clock in her final races, Thiel is more than likely to end her AU career in tears of joy.
“Swimming does a lot of things for me,” she says. “It definitely relaxes me. Every year after conferences we get a few days off. I just sit there and get frustrated because I really just want to go swimming. I need it.”
(Photos courtesy of Athletics Department)
