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Leigh Ann Fetter

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Leigh Ann Fetter
Personal information
Full nameLeigh Ann Fetter
National teamUnited States
Born (1969-05-23) May 23, 1969 (age 55)
Louisville, Kentucky
Height5 ft 11 in (1.80 m)
Weight134 lb (61 kg)
Sport
SportSwimming
StrokesFreestyle
College teamUniversity of Texas
CoachMark Schubert
Medal record
Women's swimming
Representing the United States
World Championships (LC)
Silver medal – second place 1991 Perth 50 m freestyle
Pan Pacific Championships
Gold medal – first place 1989 Tokyo 4x100 m medley
Bronze medal – third place 1989 Tokyo 50 m freestyle

Leigh Ann Fetter (born May 23, 1969), later known by her married name Leigh Ann Witt, is an American former competition swimmer who represented the United States at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. [1]

Early life and swimming

Fetter grew up in Louisville, Kentucky's East End neighborhood, and was a member of Lakeside Swim Club. She spent several summers beginning as a child of eight swimming for Louisville's Douglass Hills swim team, where she would later coach. She did not begin competitive year-round swimming until her Sophomore year, for Sacred Heart Academy in Louisville, where she attended High School.[2]

She swam with the Lakeside Seahawks Team as a High School Junior, at Louisville's Lakeside Swim Club, a large club originally founded in 1924 in a rock quarry.[3][4] She began to excel in swimming at Lakeside as a Junior and as a Senior under Head Coach Monty Hopkins, colleges began to take notice when she finished sixth in the Senior National Championships.[2] She won the Kentucky State Swimming Championships in the 50-yard free in both 1986 and 1987, and in the 100-yard free in 1987.[5] Her 1987 record Kentucky High School Time in the 50-yard freestyle was 23.96 seconds.[6]

1988 Seoul Olympics

She finished fifth in the final of the women's 50-meter freestyle in a time of 25.78 seconds.[1] She may have far closer to receiving a medal than known in the immediate results, as three competitors to finish above her were disqualified after testing positive for performance enhancing drugs.[7]

University of Texas swimming

Fetter attended the University of Texas at Austin, and swam for the Texas Longhorns swimming and diving team in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) competition from 1987 to 1991. During her college years, she was coached primarily by Texas's head Women's Coach Mark Schubert, a Hall of Fame and Olympic Coach. She won a total of seven NCAA titles while swimming for Texas, with four in the 50 free, and three in the 100 free, and retained the school record in the 50 free as of 2004.[7]

She was the first woman to ever swim the 50-yard freestyle in under 22 seconds, and won the NCAA individual national championship in the event four consecutive years. She was also a key points contributor to the Lady Longhorns' NCAA national team championships in 1988, 1990 and 1991, and received the Honda Sports Award for Swimming and Diving, recognizing her as the outstanding college female swimmer of the year in 1990–91.[8][9] She was inducted into the university's Longhorn Hall of Honor in 2003.[10]

International compeitition

Fetter swam in the World Championships in 1991 in Perth, Australia, winning a silver medal in the 50 free. [11] In the 1989 Pan Pacific Championships in Tokyo, she won a gold in the 4 x 100 meter medley relay, and a bronze in her signature event, the 50-meter freestyle. She received a Gold in the 1990 Good Will Games.[12]

Coaching swimming

College coaching

After completing her competitive swimming years, she was an Assistant Coach for Florida State beginning in the Fall of 1993 and was later named Head Coach of the Women's Swimming and Diving Team at James Madison in September 1995.[7][12][13][14]

Coaching at Douglass Hills

By 1999 she returned to her hometown to coach Louisville's Douglass Hills Team. In the winter months she coached the Triton Swim Club. Douglass Hills is a competitive age group team with over a hundred swimmers in the Louisville Swim Association Summer League, and meets around seven or eight weeks in the summer.[7] She won a number of the League's Summer Championships, including eight in a row between 1999-2007.[3][7] Fetter-Whitt's Douglass Hill's Team also won the Red Division Title from 2000-2003, an honor given to the largest team leagues. By 2004, her two daughters also swam for the team and Leigh Ann competed during meet halftimes with a swim team composed of several of Douglass Hill's parents.[7]

Lincoln Southwest High School

From around 2015-2019, she coached Lincoln Southwest High School in Lincoln, Nebraska leading the team to three consecutive state championships from 2016-2018.[15] The team's first swimming and diving championship was in 2014, which was also the first swim and dive championship for a Lincoln school since 1999.[16] In 2017 the girls' swimming team was first at state, and set five individual state records for individual events.[17] Dominating the state championships in 2017, Lincoln Girls scored a meet record number of points and for the second straight year won nine of eleven events.<ref=State>Grell, Clark, "One Chapter Closes for Bub", Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Nebraska, 27 February 2017, pg. B3</ref>[18]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Sports-Reference.com, Olympic Sports, Athletes, Leigh Ann Fetter. Retrieved November 13, 2012.
  2. ^ a b Early swimming history in Clark, Mark, "Making a Splash, Douglass's Hills' Leigh Ann Fetter", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 4 December 1991, pg. 90
  3. ^ a b "19 Teams Vie Saturday for LSA Swim Title", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 16 July 2008, pg. 112.
  4. ^ "Lakeside", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 25 May 2020, pg. A4
  5. ^ "The 50 Greatest Athletes From Sacred Heart", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 18 August 2019, pg. B5.
  6. ^ Frakes, Jason, "Thomas Leading Manual", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 9 February 2010, pg. C4
  7. ^ a b c d e f Began in 1999 in Casagrade, Michael, "Former World Class Swimmer is Back", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 5 July 2004, pg. E1
  8. ^ Collegiate Women Sports Awards, Past Honda Sports Award Winners for Swimming & Diving. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  9. ^ "National Championship moments: 1991 Women's Swimming and Diving". University of Texas Athletics. 25 September 2006. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  10. ^ "Leigh Ann Fetter-Witt (2003) - Hall of Honor". University of Texas Athletics. Retrieved 2023-07-11.
  11. ^ "Volleyball", Lincoln Journal-Star, Lincoln, Nebraska, 4 October 2012, pg. C3
  12. ^ a b "Leigh Ann Fetter, Olympedia Bio". Olympedia. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  13. ^ Started Florida State in 1993 in "Scoreboard, Transactions, Florida State", Hartford Courant, Hartford, Connecticut, 23 October 1993, pg. 111
  14. ^ Named Head Coach at James Madison in "Colleges, James Madison", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, pg. 13, 12 September 1996
  15. ^ "Swimming & Diving". nsaahome.org. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  16. ^ "NSAA Girls Swimming Past Champions". nsaa-static.s3.amazonaws.com. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  17. ^ "2017 State Swimming and Diving Championship". NET.
  18. ^ Left in 2019 in "Mueller Promoted to Lead Southwest Swimmers", Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, 4 October 2019, pg. C2
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