PUHI — Anya Littlefield, a sophomore at Kapa‘a High School, never dreamed she would be participating in the swimming Sectionals when she started. “I started when I was less than 8 years old with Dick Oliver at Princeville,” the Swim
PUHI — Anya Littlefield, a sophomore at Kapa‘a High School, never dreamed she would be participating in the swimming Sectionals when she started.
“I started when I was less than 8 years old with Dick Oliver at Princeville,” the Swim Kaua‘i Aquatics swimmer said. “I only had one meet — the Ed Ho Memorial, and I don’t think I did very well.”
From that time, Littlefield has progressed in swimming to where she will be leaving with SKA coach Billy Brown to compete in four events at the Sectionals in Seattle, Wash. next week.
“When Casie Ford, Desirae Pia and Emma Simms were still swimming (they graduated already), we thought we would try for a Sectional time in the team event, but fell far short,” Littlefield said. “But when I got some Zone times, coach Billy said I should work for Sectionals.”
That materialized at the state championships in December when Littlefield placed in the Top 8 in all of the eight events she swam in, earning Sectional times in the 1650- and 1000-yard Freestyle events.,
The soft-spoken sophomore said she will splash two events — the 500-yard Free and the 200-yard Butterfly before swimming the long-distance events.
“It’s been difficult work,” Littlefield said. “We have practice twice a day, and at one point, I was putting in 11,000 yards between the two practices.”
With just days remaining before she leaves on Monday, she said these final days are spent working on technique and refining footwork on the turns.
During the Kaua‘i Interscholastic Federation swim season, Littlefield topped the Kapa‘a girls, eventually being the only KIF swimmer to make the finals at the state meet.
“The KIF season was interesting because it added variety to Littlefield’s abilities,” Brown said. “It just makes her more versatile.”
Coach Orlando Anaya of the Mokihana Swim Aquatics said Littlefield is only the third Kaua‘i swimmer to make Sectional times.
“It goes back to the days of Corey Carroll in the mid-80s,” Anaya said. “Keenan Anaya also achieved Sectional times, but that year, the Sectionals were in Florida and we couldn’t afford to send him. Anya is the third person I know of to achieve Sectional times and going to Sectionals in Washington is going to be a good experience for her.”
Brown said it will be interesting to see how Littlefield performs in a big meet where there are about 60 swimmers in each of the events, including some college swimmers.
“This will be a good experience and it will be interesting to see how she performs,” Brown said. “There will also be some college swim coaches at the meet and they can see how she does as well.”
Littlefield said achieving Sectionals was a big goal for her, and after pausing for just a second, said her next goal will be to aim for Junior Nationals.
“Coach Billy said I should look at that,” Littlefield said. “It’s a long shot because you need to swim under a 17-minute mile, but I’m going to train.”
