The Sojourn’s Athlete of the Week, presented by Amplify Media, is Sidney Campbell from the Indiana Wesleyan Women’s Swim team.
Campbell is a senior from Crawfordsville, Indiana. She attended North Montgomery High School.
“I didn’t really think about swimming in college until my sophomore year of high school,” Campbell said. “I had some big time drops at sectionals and I started looking at times of other college athletes and was like ‘I can keep up with that now.’”
In choosing IWU, Campbell not only had family ties to the university but also was attracted to the fact that student-athletes could be nursing majors while in a sport.
“A lot of the bigger schools won’t let you be a nursing major and an athlete at all,” Campbell said.
In her time as a Wildcat, Campbell has been named an NAIA All-American, All-Conference Second and Third Team, Academic All-Conference twice as well as a Daktronics Scholar-Athlete twice.
“Sidney has continued to push her limits by working to train strokes she hasn’t focused on in a while. This has led to Sidney consistently showing she is ahead of where she was at the same point last year,” Wildcats’ head swim coach Stephen Wolcott said.
In addition to her performance in the pool, Campbell serves as the team’s captain.
“Sidney is a light and a positive impact on the team. She’s always there for us and a shoulder we can lean on. She’s very encouraging and positive and has always redirected my thoughts that were negative and reinforced positive things into my life,” junior teammate Katie McKay said.
The Wildcats are nearing the postseason, with conference and national championships coming up next month. Before that, though, they head to the University of the Cumberlands of Kentucky for a separate competition in same the pool that the Mid-South Conference Championships are held in.
“I’m super thankful that we’ll get to go down there and feel the pool out before we swim there at conference, so it’s super awesome,” Campbell said.
The Mid-South Conference Championships will take place in Danville, Kentucky, February 6-8, before the NAIA National Championships are held in Elkhart, Indiana about a month later, March 5-8.
