Leigh Ann Fetter
Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Full name | Leigh Ann Fetter | |||||||||||||||||||||||
National team | United States | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Born | Louisville, Kentucky | May 23, 1969|||||||||||||||||||||||
Height | 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 134 lb (61 kg) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport | Swimming | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Strokes | Freestyle | |||||||||||||||||||||||
College team | University of Texas | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Coach | Mark Schubert | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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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]
Fetter attended and swam for Sacred Heart Academy in Louisville, and won Kentucky State Swimming Championships in the 50-yard free in both 1986 and 1987, and in the 100-yard free in 1987.[2] Her 1987 record Kentucky High School Time in the 50-yard freestyle was 23.96 seconds.[3] Before college, she also swam with the highly competitive Douglass Hills swim team in Louisville in the summer, where she would later coach and was a member of Lakeside Swim Club.[4]
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.[5]
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 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.[6][7] She was inducted into the university's Longhorn Hall of Honor in 2003.[8]
Coaching
After completing her competitive swimming years, she coached for Florida State and James Madison. She also had early coaching stints for the Greater Nebraska Swim Team and Lincoln Southwest High School men’s and women’s teams.[5][9]
By 2008 she was coaching the Louisville Tritons Swim club in the Winter months, and in the summer was a coach with the Douglass Hills Team, a competitive age group team with over a hundred swimmers in the Louisville Swim Association Summer League, that met around seven or eight weeks in the summer.[5]
She had worked with the Douglass Hills Team for close to two decades beginning in 1999, and had won a number of the League's Summer Championships, including eight in a row between 1999-2007.[4][5] 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 in a swim team composed of several of the Douglass Hill's team's parents.[5]
See also
- List of University of Texas at Austin alumni
- List of World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming (women)
References
- ^ a b Sports-Reference.com, Olympic Sports, Athletes, Leigh Ann Fetter. Retrieved November 13, 2012.
- ^ "The 50 Greatest Athletes From Sacred Heart", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 18 August 2019, pg. B5.
- ^ Frakes, Jason, "Thomas Leading Manual", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 9 February 2010, pg. C4
- ^ a b "19 Teams Vie Saturday for LSA Swim Title", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 16 July 2008, pg. 112.
- ^ a b c d e Began in 1999 in Casagrade, Michael, "Former World Class Swimmer is Back", The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, 5 July 2004, pg. E1
- ^ Collegiate Women Sports Awards, Past Honda Sports Award Winners for Swimming & Diving. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
- ^ "National Championship moments: 1991 Women's Swimming and Diving". University of Texas Athletics. 25 September 2006. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
- ^ "Leigh Ann Fetter-Witt (2003) - Hall of Honor". University of Texas Athletics. Retrieved 2023-07-11.
- ^ "Leigh Ann Fetter, Olympedia Bio". Olympedia. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
- 1969 births
- Living people
- American female freestyle swimmers
- Olympic swimmers for the United States
- Sacred Heart Academy (Louisville) alumni
- Swimmers at the 1988 Summer Olympics
- Texas Longhorns women's swimmers
- Sportspeople from Louisville, Kentucky
- World Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming
- American swimming biography stubs