Girls swimmer of the year: Hardman stays focused on getting better

Mary Leigh Hardman likes to control just she can control in the pool. That means she's just focused on getting better instead of worrying about what place she'll finish in a race. The three-time gold medal winner wants to win gold medals, but as long as she's improving and getting faster, that's her main priority, that's what she can control.

Although she fell short in her bid to add a fourth gold medal to her collection, the Lake Wales senior did improve this season. The three-time state champion won two more state medals to give her six overall in her career, and she again was the dominant swimmer in Polk County.

Hardman is The Ledger's 2022 Girls Swimmer of the Year.

In a season in which the weather played a big factor in how swimmers trained and competed, Hardman won county titles in the 100- and 200-yard freestyle. She then won district and region titles in both the 50 free and 100 free. Then at the state meet, she finished fourth in the 50 free an third in the 100 free.

"Considering all the obstacles, the hurricane, the raining every day, I think I did pretty good and I'm proud of it," Hardman said.

Hardman's times at the state meet this year were as fast or faster than last year when the finished first in the 50 free and second in the 100 free and were faster than her times as a freshman when she won both events.

In the 50 free, she won in 23.88 as a freshman and in 23.82 last year. Last month, she again swam 23.82 in the final, but her time of 23.71 was the fastest she's ever swim at the state meet in that event.

In the 100 free, Hardman won in 51.49 as a freshman. She swam 51.53 last year then last month had her fastest times at the state meet in the event by swimming 51.36 in the final and 51.21 in the preliminaries.

Hardman is at the point in her career where improvement is often measured tenths of a second.

"I just have to keep working hard," she said. "Especially in the sprints, there are so many things you can mess up easily. So if everything is not sharp and on point, there are a lot of little things that can cause you to not get your best time. Especially in the 50 (free), there is no room to mess up. There's a lot of technical stuff — starts, turns, underwater, things like that."

Of course, one of the biggest parts of the race is the swim stroke.

"It can be hard to change your stroke after you've been doing it a long time," she said. "I've been swimming this way for years and years, and it's hard to change it. Technically, it's been proven that if you do this stroke or have this certain technique, you'll go faster. So those are things you can work on."

One of the parts of her performance she's focusing on heavily to improve is her starts, which said is a struggle to be consistent.

"I don't know why," Hardman said. "But I could go higher, I go go farther. There's reaction time, getting off the blocks as soon as the buzzer goes off. The faster you get off the blocks, the faster your swim can be."

Another area she's working is how long she stays under water on the starts. It can be tricky on how long a swimmer should stay under before starting the stroke.

"For me, I come up very quick, and I've been told that it's not necessarily a good thing," she said. "I think when I do more under water than what I usually do, I end up going slower. You do use more energy coming out faster."

So Hardman still is looking for the ideal length of time to stay under water along with improving the start — the reaction time and the angle of her dive.While her main events in the postseason has been the 50 free and 100 free, she's also good in the 200 free. She won county in 1:56.53. That time would have been good enough for sixth place in the 2A meet, and it doesn't include the improvement she likely would have had as a result in training for the postseason in that event.

For now, she doesn't think she'll change her specialties, but she's also not ruling it out. In the past, coaches have told her she might be good at other strokes, the 200 individual medley, but that hasn't happened recently.

"I think I've found what I'm good at," she said. "It would be hard to change my repertoire of what I've been swimming for a long time to something new."

Hardman admitted it's hard to believe that she has just one more year of high school swimming. As you would expect, she's not the same swimmer she was as a freshman competing for the first time in high school.

"As a freshman going into this (state) meet, I was probably a lot more anxious," she said. "I don't know how it works. I have an idea, but I haven't been there, I don't know what the competition is like. I haven't competed at the high school level. It's something knew. I was something I was experiencing for the first time. But now, I've been there. I know how it goes."

With one more year of high school, Hardman's focus is improving her times and finding the right college. While she admits winning another state title would be nice, it's not her biggest goal and not something that's going to consume her. She's just going to focus on getter better and see what happens next year.

It doesn't mean, however, that she doesn't like winning.

"It's kind of strange," she said. "I don't consider myself an extremely competitive person. I don't have a very competitive nature. But I'm competitive when I need to be. When I get on the blocks, I know I need to be competitive right now. I'm not going to tip over the Monopoly board and be upset about it. It's just a game. When I'm at a swim meet that I've worked so hard for and put by tears and sweat into it, I'm going to do all I can do."

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Girls swimmer of the year: Hardman stays focused on getting better