Junior Carlee Timmins is a business management major at Rowan, which is perfectly fitting as she manages her business in the water better than most.

Head coach Brad Bowser couldn’t have said enough about Timmins as a competitor. She’s always trying to be better than the person next to her and will do anything to be the best in the pool.

“She’s a mental giant and can push herself past the person next to [her],” Bowser said.

Bowser commended her on how much she grew this season.  An athlete that is super hard on herself, Timmins hasn’t had a single race this season that didn’t go well this year.

Bowser said she is able to blend the technical and competitive skills that it takes to be a winner and this helps elevate her to an elite level.

“She’s more of a competitor than clinician so she will do everything she can to be first at that wall at the end of that race she’s a competitor and sometimes with competitors that are like that they don’t put the technique into it,” Bowser said.

Her drive to win is always visible, even in her hobbies. Timmins loves running. She’ll jog to be able to build up her endurance for her specialization, distance.

From the time she was eight years old and swimming at Old Orchard Swim Club in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Timmins has felt drawn to distance events. She didn’t consider herself a “good” distance swimmer in high school, but constantly produced good results because no one else on her team wanted to swim distance. She’s willing to tackle the aspect of the sport that others won’t.

The drive to do anything to touch the wall first for Timmins seems natural since she will do whatever it takes to be like her role model, Olympic gold medalist, Katie Ledecky.

She wants to be just like her in that she is also a distance swimmer, but strives for her level of success.

“Katie Ledecky is my biggest inspiration,” Timmins said, “She’s the best female swimmer ever and she swims distance. No one compares to her. She’s amazing. It’s incomparable how good she is. She’s so humble about it. She’s such a nice person.”

Timmins is also a lot like her idol. Bowser says he has to “put the breaks on her” now and then because she pushes herself so much. She’s the kind of athlete that win a race and still not be satisfied with the time.

She’s also much like her hero, being a humble and kind person. She loves animals and her job at PetSmart is her portal to the “other world.” An owner of three guinea pigs, two dogs and one hamster, Timmins loves animals. Besides swimming, she says it’s what she cares about the most.

Her humble nature also showed her freshman year at the Metropolitan Conference Championship (METS) when she broke a team record, arguably one of her most memorable moment as an athlete. She was happier with making her team proud than she was with breaking the record.

Many have heroes that they strive to be like, and Timmins is no exception. Whether she has done it consciously or not, she modeled her athletic career after Ledecky.

While Ledecky is remembered for her five gold medals and her tangible success, Timmins will be remembered for her drive and willingness throughout her career.

For comments/questions about this story, email sports@thewhitonline.com or tweet @TheWhitOnline.