Reade Lawson '21 Recruiting Profile

I was born in Key West, Florida and spent the first 15 years of my life living in the Florida Keys. I learned to swim as an infant because we lived so close to the water, but by the time I was 10 I was hooked on competitive swimming and joined a tiny 6-swimmer team one hour away in Marathon, FL. There were four team practices each week, and I trained on my own an additional four times. I was usually the only swimmer from our team at meets and went without a coach. Then at age 15 everything changed. My family moved to Sebastian, and I found myself on a large team with amazing teammates – teammates who push and encourage each other to achieve their goals. At first the transition was difficult because I had never swum timed sets or had a coach at a meet, but after just a few months I am starting to see big time drops in all events. My short-term goals are to get my 200IM under 2 minutes so I can swim an individual event at the Florida State Championships, and my 100 free under 50 seconds so I can help the team get to the State Championships in the 4x100 free relay. Long-term goals are getting to Junior Nationals and maybe even Olympic Trials. Being on a team has changed my life, and I would love to continue swimming in college.

Academically, I have always been home schooled. Homeschooling has given me and my family the freedom to travel extensively. I have been to all 7 continents and over 50 countries. Homeschooling has also given me the time to explore topics I find interesting such as linguistics, philosophy, and physics. Although I am swimming for Sebastian River High School, I am currently enrolled as a distance learning student with The Global Village School in California. I particularly enjoy their many Peace and Diversity Studies courses. I have been able to satisfy my passion for languages by taking Spanish “in” Guatemala and Mandarin “in” China via Skype. In college I would like to continue language study as well as theoretical physics and the relationship between physics and philosophy. With the right college the possibilities are limitless.