By Nate Jones

Staff Writer

When swimmer Nicole Harmon, 17, graduates from Scarborough High School this year she will be leaving behind a legacy.

According to her coach, Bob Stone, Harmon is irreplaceable.

“She has been the foundation of the girls’ swim team for four years, not counting the two great years she had with our middle school program,” he says.

Harmon has been swimming competitively since she was 7 years old, and has competed in regional meets since she was 9  – taking her up and down the East Coast. 

Harmon says she had the chance to see college swimmers from George Mason University in Virginia, and it was those first impressions that led her to apply to the school which is 600 miles away from her Scarborough home.

“They are fast,” she says, laughing. “And some of them have George Mason tattoos. It is pretty serious.”

On top of swimming 14 hours a week, volunteering as an assistant coach for the Scarborough Middle School swim team, working at a daycare, being actively involved as the public relations director for the Scarborough Key Club and attending school, Harmon is preparing for college and has already earned a spot on George Mason’s swim team.

“I watched the swimmers take to the blocks and I began to think to myself, maybe I can compete on that level,” Harmon says of the Division 1 school. “So I applied and through some stroke of luck – got in.”

Luck had nothing to do with it. 

In the 100-meter backstroke and 100-meter fly Harmon has excelled – helping the Red Storm take home a state championship and earning her the title of “conference all-star” each of the past four years.  She helped the Scarborough team win three conference championships, won “multiple individual conference and state championships” from 2005 to 2008 and helped the Red Storm win the 200 medley relay team event four years in a row, Stone says.

Harmon currently holds five school swim-time records and was named a state all-star swimmer by the Southern Maine Swim League in March. Stone says Harmon would hold six, if it hadn’t been for steep competition at this year’s state championship.

“I held the state 100-meter backstroke record in 2007, and broke it early this year,” she says.

She was bested at the championship, but Stone says she remained valiant.

“She was very gracious in her defeat as she, despite the devastating loss, showed great sportsmanship in congratulating her opponent directly after the race,”  Stone says.

Of all the awards and praise, Harmon says the most meaningful has been the recognition she received from the Maine Swim Coaches Association. They named her Class A swimmer of the year for 2007 and 2008.

“They are not competition judges, they are coaches and they judge on character and accomplishment,” Harmon says. “What they have says about me – that is what I am most proud of.”

Harmon says she also chose George Mason because of the competition.

“In Maine and New England you compete against the same swimmers a lot,” she says, adding that the competition both on the college level and in the southern states is generally tougher. “The weather is nice too.”

Harmon says she wants to study exercise science – a requirement to become a personal fitness trainer. Harmon says she ideally would like to work with athletes, helping them stay off the bench.

“I love being able to help and motivate people, and see them improve because of what I have done,” she says, adding her experience with physical trainers – as an athlete – is what fostered her desire to become one.

Harmon says she is a competitor at heart and spends nearly all of her swim time in pools. Leaping from a block into the clear, warm waters of a competition-sized pool is her idea of a good swim – not splashing around in a river or the ocean.

“I hate swimming where I cannot see the bottom, it really freaks me out,” she says.

But she says swim time is sometimes hard to come by in Scarborough – the high school has no swimming pool. The Maine Principals Association maintains a ruling that high school students cannot skip their school team event to attend a club event. Harmon, who has been a member of the Coastal Maine Aquatics swim club since she was 7 years old, says Scarborough swimmers must work around other schools’ pool-times and, because that usually means pools are available in the evening, it conflicts with her club schedule.

“It makes it really hard for all of us who swim club and school,” she says.

But scheduling conflicts aside, Harmon says her team is her second family.

“We are a giant family. It is the people you meet, going away with your second-family on weekends, the relationships you build – I can’t even put into words what my team means to me,” she says.

Stone says it is this trait that makes Harmon such a great asset to the team.

“It is her leadership and love of her teammates and school which will be missed the most,” Stone says.

Harmon is an only child, and says it has been difficult coming to terms with leaving behind her mother. But in her worry, Harmon says she is reassured by her mother’s confidence.

“She tells me to go for my dreams, so that is what I am doing – I couldn’t be more excited,” she says. “I am just going to take this passion as far as I can, if that means looking at Olympic Trials someday then – hey – I’m game.”

To contact Stowell P. Watters call 282-4337, ext. 219 or email news@scarboroughleader.com.