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Olympic Swimming Trials: Naples' Erndl rededicates self, qualifies for Trials
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Erika Erndl is about 140 pounds of tightly woven muscles, her body a product of the decades she's spent whipping it through the water.
Her shoulders are broad and her torso an inverted pyramid. Her abs are as flat and solid as the deck of a swimming pool.
She doesn't look a day past her prime.
Or swim that way.
In a sport traditionally dominated by teenage prodigies, Erndl, who turned 30 a month ago today, has resurfaced as an Olympic hopeful.
She's in Omaha, Neb., this week to compete in five events,back at the Olympic Trials for the third time — but the first time in eight years.
The route this time has gone through Naples. She's been a resident the last three years and a member of Swim Florida the last two.
“She's swimming better times right now,” said Swim Florida coach Darryl Sullivan, “than she ever has.”
And that's saying something.
Erndl, a Gladwyne, Pa., native, was a star in her college days at the University of North Carolina. An All-American all four years. A two-time Olympic Trials qualifier, in 1996 and 2000.
She graduated from UNC in 2001, soon after competing in the NCAA Championships her senior season. She didn't compete again for five years.
Erndl (maiden name: Acuff) stayed in shape — she ran, took spin classes — but she didn't swim. She got married to her college sweetheart. Earned a master's degree in elementary education. Began to live the life of a former star swimmer turned typical college grad.
“I just moved on,” she said. “Thought it was over.”
That's not unusual, mind you, considering the sport in which she has made her mark.
Perhaps the biggest story in Omaha this week will be Dara Torres, the 41-year-old mom from California looking to make her fifth Olympic team. She is doing more than anyone to smash old stereotypes about swimmers peaking early.
But Olympic-level swimming has long been a youngster's dance. Of the roughly 650 female swimmers competing at the trials, only four are older than Erndl.
“One of the reasons,” Sullivan said, “is that there just really hasn't been much opportunity for swimmers after college in years past. They haven't had the sponsorships that would allow them to continue training once they got into the professional world.”
Erndl doesn't have sponsorships. What she does have, though, is Florida sunshine, a change she believes might have propelled her comeback.
Norris Pool, where Swim Florida trains, is a five-minute drive from Erndl's house. And she could swear the weather's always nice.
“I have friends up north who can't believe I'm doing this,” said Erndl, who moved to Naples with her husband Kevin when the latter, who works in finance, switched jobs three years ago. “I just tell them they have no idea what it's like here.”
Erndl figures the fire in her was always there. She just needed some sun up above to light it.
And a pact.
The way Erndl remembers it, she and Kevin, himself a former UNC swimmer, were driving back from Clearwater, where they had watched their friends compete in a big triathlon. Before they reached home, the two had reached an agreement: They'd put their athletic careers back in motion — Kevin as a triathlete, Erika as an Olympic hopeful.
Off they went.
Kevin competed in that same Clearwater triathlon a year later. His wife had started making Olympic Trials cuts by last summer.
“We both share that true competitive spirit,” the wife said. “We decided then that we needed to have some goals for ourselves.”
Now they're in Omaha, on the big stage, as Erika competes in her third Olympic Trials, right where she left off eight years ago.
She is, no doubt, a long shot to make her first Olympic team. She's seeded 44th in the 100-meter freestyle, 49th in the 200 free, 56th in the 400 individual medley, 58th in the 200 IM and 101st in the 100 breaststroke. Either way, she'll have no regrets.
“I'm glad I came back,” she said, “because I'm proving to myself that I wasn't finished. I think I'm swimming better than I ever have.”
Her body, and her times, say as much.
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