During her first swimming lesson, 3-year-old Maddy Moore was more of a clinger than a swimmer. The wall was her best friend.
“We were at an outdoor YMCA pool and I kept holding onto the side of the pool to move around, even though my instructors were telling me not to,” the Steinert sophomore recalled. “I didn’t want to put my head in the water.”
Once she began to submerge herself, Moore came to the surface with plenty of first-place finishes in competitive swimming.
This past season, she had seven firsts and a second in her eight dual meet butterfly races; claimed five firsts and a second in the individual medley and won her only 100 and 500 freestyle races. She also swam all three relays and was part of six winning teams.
At the Colonial Valley Conference meet Moore took third in a personal best time of 1:10.29. West Windsor-Plainsboro North’s Moksha Shah barely beat her out for second in 1:09.48 after Moore edged Shah in the preliminary race. Maddy actually swam faster in the finals, but so did Shah.
“We both swim the races differently,” Moore said. “She tends to go out faster in the first 50, and I usually bring it back faster in the second half of the race. In finals I was catching up to her towards the end but just barely missed. While I was originally disappointed that she beat me, I swim against her all the time at club and she’s the nicest girl; so if anyone were to beat me, I’m glad it was her.”
Moore entered high school as one of those rare gems who excelled at a stroke other than the freestyle.
“That’s absolutely awesome,” said first-year head coach Bruce Schroeder, who took over for Gerri “Bear” Leone. “The freestyle is kind of the default stroke. A lot of people like to start with that one. They’re comfortable with it.
“It’s kind of like pulling teeth to get them to try new strokes, especially stuff like the breast and butterfly. They are much more complex to teach and learn. It’s very refreshing to have someone I can just put in any event and she’ll swim it with no complaints and do it well.”
Moore noted that she works on all the strokes fairly equally, but does put a bit more time into the fly, which is her favorite.
“I learned years ago that working on the other strokes, even if they’re not quite as strong as my fly, helps a lot,” she said. “Although I tolerate the other strokes and they have their moments, I don’t particularly like any of the others.”
Schroeder got to watch Moore last year when he served as lifeguard for Steinert’s meets and practices. He was amazed at how effortless she made such a difficult stroke as the butterfly look.
“It absolutely takes patience, determination and resilience,” he said. “It’s a very difficult stroke to execute, and especially to execute well. It’s very demanding on the body, very demanding of the muscles that aren’t used often in your daily life or in your other sports. To keep at it and keep going until you’re better and better takes a lot of patience and a lot of discipline.”
Moore feels that high level swimming in general, but “definitely the butterfly” does take all the mental tools to which Schroeder alluded.
“I’ve had bad races, overuse injuries and sicknesses that kept me away from the pool, but throughout it all I kept showing up,” she said. “I made it my mission to keep trying my best and to learn from the bad days and let them go.”
It shows, for as Schroeder said, “she’s very good at freestyle, but she’s far and away one of the better flyers I’ve seen.”
Moore began swimming competitively for Team 85’s in their low-key summer league. She had to be coerced by her mom into swimming with the organization year-round.
“I reluctantly joined and it was the best decision I ever made,” she said. “When Covid hit, the team dissolved so I joined Peddie and this is my fifth year with them.”
There were also dalliances with soccer, dance, basketball and gymnastics, “but none of them really stuck. I would always feel like they were something I had to do and not something that I wanted to do.”
Make no mistake, she wanted to swim.
And it was with Team 85’s that Moore first began the butterfly.
“A coach asked me if I wanted to swim it,” she said. “I had never done it but I was willing to give it a try because it sounded like fun. The next day I swam butterfly for the first time and fell in love. After that all I wanted to do was butterfly, and I started chasing different times and cuts.”
Moore made an immediate impact her freshman year with the Spartans. She had six firsts and a second in the fly, five firsts, a second and a third in the IM and a win in her only 100 free. In the relays she helped Steinert to six wins in the medley and 400 free relays. She surprised herself in the CVC meet with a fourth-place finish, as “I expected to get around 12th.”
Schroeder watched with admiration from his lifeguard stand.
“She was just incredible,” he said. “Whether you knew anything about swim or didn’t know anything about swim, you could see she had talent… I think it comes from her club swimming at Peddie.”
In looking upon her club career to date, Moore’s favorite memory came when she swam the 200 fly long course for the first time. She battled a case of nerves beforehand since she wasn’t quite sure how to swim it and knew it was a physically demanding race.
“I ended up doing really good in prelims,” she recalled. “I was placed first heading into finals, where not only did I keep that first place, but also dropped 8 seconds from my time in the morning.”
Despite her club status, Moore still invests as much time as possible in Steinert swimming. She made every meet and made every practice she was able to.
“A lot of times we tell them at club practice, ‘you’re gonna get better yardage and better experience there, so don’t miss club for the swim team practices,’” Schroeder said. “During the meets, she’s into it. She’s rooting people on. When her friends are swimming the 500, she’s the first to volunteer to count for them. She’s a very involved team player for sure.”
And as intense as she appears during her events or while rooting on teammates, Moore is actually chilling out, in a way. “I enjoy high school swimming because it gives me a chance to relax and simply enjoy the sport without worrying about dropping time or getting a qualifying cut,” she said. “I also love the community it forms, and how everyone is so supportive of one another no matter what level they are on.”
The pool is not Moore’s only arena of excellence. She belongs to Steinert’s Book Club and participated in its Consumer Bowl. Her weighted GPA is 4.7, and she hopes to swim in college one day.
“She’s just a very positive kid,” Schroeder said. “She’s always happy, always smiling, always laughing. She doesn’t care if she wins the meet or loses the meet, she does it to have fun.”
All she had to do was let go of that wall.
Maddy Moore.,
