Noah Schowengerdt is your prototypical 13-year-old.
His passion — sports, sports and sports.
His favorite?
“Whatever’s in season,” he said. “I like them all.”
He’s done quite well at pretty much all of them, too.
Schowengerdt was a standout on the football field, wrestling mat and on the track last year at Iola Middle School.
Summer sports took over as the calendar hit June and July.
And with his baseball season having concluded earlier this month, it gives Schowengerdt a few precious days to focus on perhaps his favorite sport of them all — swimming
Schowengerdt will take to the pool for the final time of the 2021 Iola Seahorses season today at the Southeast Kansas League Swim Meet in Chanute, where he hopes to add to his extensive collection of medals and trophies.
“I’m hoping to do well,” he said. “I think I have a really good chance to win some races.”
There’s plenty of reason for optimism.
In channeling his inner Michael Phelps, Schowengerdt has earned five league championships in six seasons while with the Iola swim team. He’s kept up the winning tradition this year, winning all but two races — more on that later — despite swimming against competitors as much as five years older than he is.
SCHOWENGERDT learned to swim as a 2-year-old, and began swimming competitively at age 5.
But his racing career almost ended before it started.
See, he loved the pool, but was scared to race.
“I refused to get in the water,” he recalled.
It took his father, Daniel, some gentle persuasion to get young Noah to climb onto the starting blocks. “He made me get in the water,” Schowengerdt laughed
The fates — and a perhaps unreasonable fear he was going to sink — propelled young Schowengerdt to victory in that first race.
So he agreed to race again, this time with a little less trepidation.
