Grace Sherman '19 Recruiting Profile

I am Grace Sherman, a high school junior. I’m a dual athlete, balancing my time between swimming and water polo. I am a Georgia state-qualifying USA swimmer with Spartan’s Aquatics, a competitive USA-swim club located north of Atlanta. I've been competing in USA swim meets for over 10 years, stepping onto the pool deck at Dynamo Swim Club as a five-year old. I’ve earned Georgia All-Star recognition for AAAA motivational times as an age-group swimmer as well as scored points for Dynamo Swim Club in Age Group State Championships. For eight consecutive years, I have qualified in multiple events for both short-course and long-course age-group as well as senior state championships. I often do two-a-day practices, cover thousands of yards each week and put in hundreds of hours each year.

Swimming is not just solely a sport for me -- it allows me to learn how to set goals, map out a plan, adjust my direction and celebrate "big" when I meet my goals, as well as learn from my losses.  Competitive swimming has given me a solid foundation for life: it's taught me discipline, responsibility, commitment and perseverance. And being a dual-athlete has given me a chance to increase my strength and endurance in different ways than before, to learn how to be a positive teammate and to lead a group of athletes toward a common goal: to be the best they can be in their sport.  My focus in swimming this year, during my junior year in high school, is to swim faster, be stronger and to learn what it means to race with a "competitive" mindset.

Although I do not yet have national experience in USA Swimming, I have competed at the national level in USA Water Polo.  I am a sprinter, driver, and utility player for Dynamo Youth Water Polo Club (Atlanta, GA).  I’ve been twice selected for the USA Water Polo Olympic Development Program, representing the Southeastern ODP Zone Team in the USA National Championships. In 2016, I was selected for the Cadet Team as a freshman, despite having never played water polo before that season. As a sophomore, I qualified for the 2017 ODP Youth Team and traveled to California for my second national championship. I also competed in the 2017 Junior Olympics National Championships when my club team, Dynamo Youth Water Polo, became the first-ever Georgia-based team to qualify for Junior Olympics. During the fall high school season, I play Varsity water polo for two Georgia high school teams: Atlanta Public School’s (APS) Division I A team (Co-ed) and the APS Girls’ team. Earlier this month, after just two seasons of playing high school water polo, I was awarded 2017 Georgia’s Most Valuable Player of the League/Girls’ Division. 

My success playing water polo is closely tied to what I've learned from swimming: that practicing perfect is what it takes to win; performing under pressure requires mental strength and loving what you are doing is what keeps you in the pool.  All the while, I've continued to pursue academics, community service and fine arts. I recently earned the 2017 USA Water Polo All-American Athlete Scholar Award/Outstanding Honors by maintaining a 4.0 GPA, or higher, while participating in a National USA Water Polo event. In addition, I’m a two-time American Water Polo (AWP) Scholar-Athlete Award recipient.