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For most high school swimmers, the cold weather months are the offseason – a time for relaxation and/or an opportunity to play another varsity sport within the school.
But Terrebonne High School junior Alec Adams isn’t most high school swimmers. Unlike a lot of his teammates and opponents, Adams competes year-round and is in a pool 12 months out of the year. He does so in hopes of reaching his career-long goal of being a college swimmer.
Adams is currently swimming for Crawfish Aquatics South – a club team based out of the Houma-Thibodaux area that gives local swimmers of all ages an opportunity to compete at the highest level of competition.
He’s currently red-hot after a dominant junior season at Terrebonne that included countless titles in several events. That dominant 2015 has Adams eyeballing the future – one which he plans to fill with hard work so that he can make a push to be the top swimmer in Louisiana next fall.
“Right now, I am working harder than I ever have before, because I have some big meets coming up over the Martin Luther King Holiday and after Mardi Gras,” Adams said. “It’s not the offseason yet for me. My season is just beginning.”
For Adams, swimming is something he’s done his entire life, a sport he picked up at the age of 3.
The Terrebonne High School star said he never realized how good he was as a youth swimmer, touting that he just participated in the sport for fun.
But when he got to Terrebonne High School, Adams said things got serious, and he had an inkling that he might be pretty good.
As a sophomore Adams burst onto the scene and had a monstrous 2014. He was First-Team All-District and conquered several titles for Terrebonne – an upstart program that has been one of the most competitive teams in the Houma-Thibodaux area for the past several seasons.
“I realized that I could get somewhere in this sport when I started to drop time meet by meet,” Adams said. “My coach told me that he could bring me to the next level, and I just needed to put the effort and the time into it.”
In 2015, Adams built on his solid sophomore season and became an absolute force.
Swimming a variety of different event for the Tigers, Adams had nothing but success. He broke out on the biggest stage at the midseason mark, helping Terrebonne trump South Lafourche to end the Tarpons lengthy unbeaten streak.
At the district meet, the Tarpons got revenge and beat Terrebonne to win the title. But it wasn’t without a Herculean effort from Adams, who won two individual titles and was part of two other relay teams that won gold – a total of four district titles in the event.
After the meet, Adams credited his teammates and coaches for the dominance.
“To get where I wanted to be this season, I had help from my coaches and teammates because they pushed me every day in practice,” Adams said. “On top of that, I really focused on my technique and tried my best to be the best swimmer that I could be in every meet.”
South Lafourche coach Corey Callais agreed with Adams’ sentiments. He said after the district meet that Adams was one of the best performers he’d ever seen in his long tenure as the team’s coach.
“They have some excellent swimmers,” Callais said. “Alec is one of them. He is one of the leaders of their team. He’s a very good competitor, and he’s very good in the events that he swims.”
But with still eight months until the next high school swimming season rolls around, Adams said he’s already focused on more.
With his club team, Adams is trying to work on all phases of his swimming in an effort to trim all of his times before his senior season.
Once the high school season comes, Adams said he has some pretty specific goals. First, he wants to help the Tigers win the district championship – the title that narrowly eluded the team in 2015. Second, Adams wants to take the next step and be the best in the state at what he does.
“We have some great talent moving up from freshman to sophomores, and I think they will be great athletes in the sport as long as they commit themselves to it,” Adams said. “I think we can win district if we all are ready and work for it. … As for myself, I just want to be able to swim Junior National times.”
Adams said he also hopes to swim in college, adding that he’s received looks from a few schools. •
