By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer
Despite the lack of an established swimming program at St. Dom’s, Emily Lewandowski is making her mark.

AUBURN – Five years from now, if students at St. Dominic Regional High School are fortunate enough to have swimming as an official sport, they can thank Emily Lewandowski.

The unassuming junior would never admit it, but Lewandowski is almost singlehandedly forcing St. Dom’s to consider adding an aquatic alternative to its traditional winter lineup of basketball, hockey and competition cheering. Lewandowski is so good, in fact, that a few Class B rivals would be surprised to learn that the Saints don’t already have an honest-to-goodness team.

“I just enjoy the competition, I guess,” Lewandowski said with a shrug. “It’s how I stay in shape. It keeps me feeling good.”

Hebron Academy coach Jake Leyden smiled at his pupil’s understated answer. Leyden has supervised Lewandowski and other St. Dom’s swimmers for two seasons as essentially a co-operative squad, competing separately.

“She’s pretty modest,” Leyden said at the end of a recent practice at Tarbell Pool on the Bates College campus. “What Emily doesn’t tell you is that four St. Dom’s girls qualified for the state meet last year, and when Emily and the other three girls placed in their events, they finished with more points than everyone except the top three teams.”

Lewandowski led the unattached Saints’ charge to fourth place, finishing second in both the 200-meter individual medley and 100-meter backstroke.

Individual state championship gold may be waiting this February. In a tune-up earlier this month, Lewandowski was an easy multiple-event winner against Class A Lewiston. The Blue Devils are unbeaten as a team in the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference.

And yes, with younger girls on the Twin Cities Swim Team watching Lewandowski’s every stroke, it is possible that her fast times are building the foundation for a third high school program in Lewiston-Auburn.

“There is a slight chance it could become a varsity sport for us within the next year or two,” said St. Dom’s athletic director Bob Boucher. “We’re looking into it.”

Lewandowski approaches the sport as if St. Dom’s is already an established power. Her leadership role exceeds that of a typical captain.

Knowing that Lewandowski will usually commute straight from Bates to her daily Twin Cities practice at the nearby Lewiston YWCA, Leyden occasionally limits her practice time to a quick dip and a few warm-up laps.

He has discovered that Lewandowski is just as valuable to the team when she’s standing on the deck, quietly lending instruction and encouragement to a teammate.

“The last two years,” said Leyden, “she has conducted our butterfly clinic and our breaststroke clinic.”

It’s hard to argue with her qualifications.

“I’ve been swimming since I was seven, so about nine years,” Lewandowski said. “I practice three-and-a-half to four hours a day. It’s a lot.”

Lewandowski would like to continue the grind in college, although at the midpoint of her junior year, she admittedly hasn’t done much research into specific programs.

The home of her practice pool is one possibility. Fellow Twin Cities product Vanessa Williamson recently completed a record-setting career at Bates.

“I don’t know much about the sport at the college level,” said Leyden. “But I do know that her times already compare favorably to what the kids at Bates and NESCAC (the NCAA Division III-affiliated New England Small College Athletic Conference) are swimming.”

Those numbers should look good on a college resume. One thing’s for certain: Lewandowski’s next team won’t hear from too many other applicants who basically started their own high school program from scratch.