Natasha Dewi '21 Recruiting Profile

I am an American citizen living in Saudi attending The KAUST School, an IB school, supporting King Abdullah's University of Science and Technology.  I was born in Indonesia and adopted by an American teacher.

We moved to Azerbaijan when I was 3 and Saudi when I was 6 years old.  I was a founding student at this school 11 years ago as my mom took a risk and came to help start a school in the Saudi Desert on the Red Sea. The campus, which was the vision of the late King Abdullah, did not have many opportunities for us in the beginning and dance was not allowed, so I started swimming lessons at age 6.  I did not swim competitively until age 11 year and then we did not have many swim meets.

I traveled to the United States every summer to join a USASwimming Team. In the past 6 years, during the school year, we often went without a team or coach and I trained on my own and flew with my mom outside the Country to compete in swim meets, by myself. My mom changed teaching assignments to become a coach so I could have someone on the deck with me at foreign meets. I also competed in golf, tennis, and badminton until last year, where I began to solely focus on swimming.

I've been witness to many changes in Saudi in my time growing up here and especially the empowerment of women. I teach swimming here to younger students and am training to be a SCUBA Instructor by the time I graduate Secondary School.  I want to study Education and hope to empower girls through sports.

My education has all been through the IB system and I maintain above a 4.0 while competing in swimming and rank # 2 in the Kingdom.

Growing up in International environments, I learned to be Open Minded, compassionate, resilient and independent. I made my first solo international trip to the United States to compete at State Short Course Championships 2020 for my club team in Hawaii. I stayed alone for 10 days and navigated the complex immigration journey from Saudi to the USA.

As we are on lockdown, home quarantine, online learning, events and competitions canceled and pools closed, but I will make the best of the situation and grow from the challenge. I continue to train and develop online dryland swimming videos for our school students online learning and think that the future of Education may need to include degrees with Online Learning emphasis.

I want to attend a quality Academic Institution and swim for a great team. With the chance and a good coach, I know I will go far.