Ever since Carly Piper was a little girl, she loved swimming, but who knew from those first Mommy and Me classes at the YMCA she would someday become Freshman Swimmer of the Year in the Big Ten?

Piper started swimming as a toddler and progressed to swimming competitively by the time she turned seven years old.

As soon as she reached high school, Carly was swimming year-round, on a club team in the summer and her high school team during the school year.

“My freshman year I swam under my older sister Courtney, who was a senior,” Piper said. “She had some of the school records, and I was just starting to get into the swing of things.”

“My sister was a really big influence on me. She would do something, and then I would want to do it too. She was always telling me, ‘You can do this, just try.’ We did have some rivalry, but she was always there telling (me) I could it.”

As Piper continued to improve, so did her team. Her junior year, her team won their high school championship, in large part due to Piper’s success.

“I won all my events and all my relays, and my good friend won all of her events,” Piper said. “My junior year was definitely the best year.”

Not only did Piper win many races throughout her high school career, by the time she graduated she had been named all-state and all-American four times.

As a result of Piper’s success, three Big Ten teams recruited her, but she eventually chose to swim for Wisconsin.

“After taking my recruiting trips to Penn State, Minnesota and Wisconsin, I just felt like I would fit in the best here,” Piper said. “This was definitely the most fun place I visited.”

At the beginning of the year, the transition from high school swimming to swimming at the college level was a little rough for Piper, mainly because of the different type of training and having to change her stroke a little bit.

The rough transition was soon forgotten, however, with Piper’s Nov. 30 receipt of an automatic bid, or A-cut, to the NCAA Championship in Austin, Texas.

“With an A-cut, you automatically make the NCAAs, but if you get the B-cut, which is a little slower than the A-cut, you are not guaranteed a spot in the championship,” Piper said. “At the end of the year, they invite all of the A-cuts to the NCAAs and then invite some of the higher B-cuts.”

As the season ended, Piper continued to swim even better and won four events at the Big Ten Championship in Ann Arbor, Mich. With wins in the 800-meter free relay, the 500-meter free, the 200-meter free and the mile, Piper set a school record for the most titles at one meet. She was also named Big Ten Freshman of the Year and Swimmer of the Championship.

“I was really surprised and excited by how well I did, and it was even more fun being in my home state and being in a pool that I kind of knew from when I swam there in club meets,” Piper said.

“Her Big Ten performance was really as good as it gets,” UW head coach Eric Hansen said. “It involved a freshman who had a pretty solid season coming into a championship meet, and then she established herself as the best swimmer in the conference. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise to [me], but it is always nice when you see something like that take place and see kids get something they deserve.”

It is now on to the NCAA Championship meet, March 21-23, for Piper, where she will complete her impressive freshman season.

“Carly is a really hard worker,” Hansen said. “She is very talented and was quite accomplished coming out of high school, but nothing like what her freshman year has shown.”