When watching senior Annie Menninger perform for the High School South girls’ swim team, one would never suspect what a harrowing start her career had.
A two-time Mercer County champion in the breaststroke, Menninger began her life treating a swimming pool as if it were an active volcano she was being tossed into.
Her dad, John, swam for Fanwood-Scotch Plains YMCA Club and also for Ohio State University, and understood the rewards of swimming. He wanted to make sure his daughter knew how to swim so he signed her up for lessons at age 2.
“I hated it,” Menninger says. “I always ran back to my mom (Marilyn). I was like, ‘I don’t want to go in!’ But my teacher was really great. She dunked me under a few times and I just started swimming.”
She learned how to swim, but never initially embraced it. She eventually joined the Cranbury Catfish Swim Club but wasn’t thrilled about it.
“I kept telling my mom ‘I don’t want to do swim this year,’” Menninger says. “But she said ‘Daddy already signed you up, you have to do it.’ I was a little afraid to go tell him I didn’t want to do it anymore, so I just stuck with it.”
As they say, everything happens for a reason. Menninger has been one of the top swimmers in the Pirate program the past few years. Look no further than the 2008 Olympics to pinpoint the turn-around in her interest, as the Michael Phelps Show coupled with former Plainsboro resident Rebecca Soni’s exploits in the breaststroke got Menninger hooked.
“I liked the breaststroke so (Soni) inspired me to keep swimming and get competitive at it,” Menninger says.
Immediately after the Olympics, she joined the Hamilton Aquatics Club at age 9 and has been there ever since.
As a freshman at South, Menninger reached the Mercer County meet’s B final in the breaststroke, and then won the event each of the past two seasons. She got to the B finals in the 500 as a sophomore and finished second in the individual medley last year.
Menninger reached states in the breast as a junior but it was in the midst of several club events, so she was stretched tightly in terms of competition.
“It was kind of hard to do so many things in a row,” she says. “But I did pretty good.”
At this year’s Pirate Invitational on January 9, Menninger won the 200-yard IM and the 100 breast to help the Pirates finish second. South, which was 10-2 heading into its final meet of the regular season, was second at its own invitational to become the first New Jersey team to finish ahead of Hunterdon Central since 2011.
Menninger wasted little time impressing first-year coach Jessica Turner, whether she was wet or dry.
“She’s phenomenal both in the water and out of the water,” Turner says. “She’s one of our captains, and she far exceeds in that role. She’s always supporting our swimmers; she works with them one on one sometimes in the pool. She helps run warm-ups with the other captains.”
She also provides input when necessary.
“I can really rely on her if I’m making meet changes or something at the beginning of a meet. I know that she has the girls team pretty set,” Turner says. “She has great line-up ideas. I run some ideas past her. She’s a really well-rounded swimmer. She knows the sport well. We definitely utilize all those assets that she has.”
One of Menninger’s greatest assets is her ability to put the team before herself. Her best event is the breast and in recent years she has increased her IM swims to become more well rounded.
“I’ve just always loved (the breast),” she says. “It’s come a little naturally but I’ve really focused on that, I’ve succeeded at that the most over the years.”
However, in a big meet with High School North on January 19, Menninger forfeited her best event for the 400-meter freestyle in order to set up the lineup for more team points. She won the 400 and the Pirates took 1-2 in the breast.
It was a typical Menninger move.
“She loves the sport, she has a passion for the sport, but she also has a passion for the team,” Turner says. “She’s never looking at what she wants to swim to do good at, she wants to put kids in an event where we know the team will succeed. I’ve really tried to build that with the team this year — teamwork and working together to have a positive outcome.”
Menninger has truly embraced that philosophy.
“She puts the team in front of herself, that’s a strong leadership role,” the coach said. “The girls, and even the boys, feed off of that and I think she just loves the sport of swimming and it shows.”
Swimming is not her only interest, however. Menninger, who plans on swimming and majoring in secondary education in college, contributes in other ways to the South community.
She is the co-president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and a peer leader. Last year she was in the school’s fall drama, “The Laramie Project,” and is also part of the Pirate Players, who perform plays for various schools in the district.
Unlike some swimmers, who feel intense pressure doing club and high school swimming, Menninger uses it as a release as she keeps it all in perspective.
“Swimming really takes a lot of stress out of my life,” she said. “I just go to practice and forget about everything else. I know it gets into a lot of people’s heads. But if you’re not expecting a lot when you do well, you’re extremely happy if you do. And if you don’t do so well it’s just another race.”
Very rarely has it been just another race for Annie Menninger.
