BY WENDI REARDON PRICE
Clarkston News Sports Writer
Sydney Stricklin is excited to take her swimming career to the next level after signing to go to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Stricklin, a Clarkston resident, shared when she visited Liberty University she felt welcomed and it felt homey. When she was looking at schools she wanted a smaller school feel and a good swim program.
“It’s a very big school, but it has a small campus feel and I love that,” she said. “Also, their swimming program is good and I liked that. It’s just an absolute beautiful campus. It’s in the mountains. It’s gorgeous. They have an interior design program I am kind of looking into. I am not really sure if that’s what I want to do. That was something I also really liked that I would be able to swim and study interior design if I chose to.”
Stricklin began swimming when she was around two- to three-years-old.

“I have lived on a lake all my life so when I was younger my mom wanted my sister and me to be able to swim really well,” Stricklin shared. “She put us in swimming really early and we stuck with it.”
When she was six-years-old she began to swim competitively. Through the years she participated in other sports, but her favorite was swimming.
“I was on a swim team in Lake Orion for a long time,” she shared. “We absolutely loved the coach, and I had a lot of friends on the team. I loved being in the water. I started getting better and better. So I decided that’s where I wanted to spend most of my time swimming. So, I stopped doing other sports and just focused on swimming.”
It was in eighth grade she decided she wanted to swim for as long as she could which included in college.
“I started putting a lot more effort into what I was doing,” Stricklin said. “Focusing on everything inside the pool and outside of the pool like what I was eating, when I was sleeping. Just focusing on everything. It started as something I want to do for the rest of my life instead of I am just doing this for fun.”
Stricklin swims with Club Wolverine out of Ann Arbor. Her primary focus is on sprint freestyle and backstroke. She made her Olympic trial cut on 50-yard freestyle a year ago.
“It was a very exciting moment for me,” she said, adding the past year has also been rough for swimming with the COVID pandemic especially when pools where shut down.
“At the beginning I wasn’t even in the water. I just did what I could do outside of the pool,” she shared. “Then, we started being able to swim outside. When it started getting colder and the indoor pools weren’t available for my team to use I decided we would have to move out of state to keep training.”
Stricklin has been in North Carolina since September with her mom and her sister swimming and training.
“We plan on going back in March if things are still open at that point,” she said.
Her advice to aspiring swimmers and athletes is to make sure you are doing it for you and have fun.
“Don’t let what other people say dictate how you think you feel,” she said.
“Make sure you are the one wanting to do it. Make sure it’s yours and nobody else’s.”
Stricklin was homeschooled from kindergarten through her senior year.
Her parents are Brad and Carey. Her younger sister, Sadie, also swims with Club Wolverine.

  Signing