Lucas Punkari
Come next fall, local swimmer Donovan Taylor will be swimming for the University of Indiana swim team.
The 17-year-old officially signed his letter of intent to join the Hoosiers last night at La Place Rendez-Vous, where he was joined by family, friends, and his fellow teammates from the Fort Frances Aquanauts Swim Team.
“It was a long experience and a long ride to get to this point, but it’s exciting,” Taylor enthused.
“I have friends who are still contemplating where they are going to end up, and I already have that done and over with, which is pretty nice.
“It’s the next step in my journey and the work just keeps continuing from here,” Taylor added.
Having received interest from over 60 schools, Taylor had visited the Universities of Denver, Minnesota, and Eastern Michigan over the past couple of months, but it ended up being the first school he visited in Bloomington, Ind., that stood out from all the rest.
“They just impressed me the most, and it felt like I was at home there,” Taylor, who will be majoring in veterinary medicine at Indiana, explained.
“When I went out there to visit the school, I just connected with the people there right from the start, and I also liked the fact that they were driven not only in the pool but also academically,” Taylor added.
Yesterday’s announcement was also a big milestone for FFAST, as Taylor became the first member of the team to be signed to an NCAA Division I program.
“For the Aquanauts, this is huge,” Dawnn Taylor, Donovan’s mother and the head coach for FFAST, said.
“It says a lot for the program, and it shows that we can produce a swimmer that can compete at a national level and can get interest from an NCAA program, even with the small pool that we have compared to what some other programs have,” Dawnn noted.
Donovan, who will start classes at Indiana in August of next year, will be back in the pool this weekend, as he and his fellow FFAST teammates will be participating at a meet in Kenora.
