Henderson Oracle

Issue date: 4/27/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Paul Shepard Practice Makes Perfect - Sophomores Nicole Horn and Grant Beahan have a long and intense summer ahead of them. Both Beahan and Horn will compete at the Swimming World Championships in Rome, Italy. Both Red Wave athletes will be swimming for their home country of Zimbabwe.

Henderson students and Zimbabwe natives Grant Beahan and Nicole Horn will spend this summer preparing to travel to Rome, Italy and represent their country in the Swimming World Championships.

Zimbabwe has the highest inflation rate in the world. Beahan, majoring in aviation, explained how that national turmoil brought them to Henderson: "There are no training facilities or heated pools in the winter, so it was extremely hard to maximize our training efforts and reach our goals."

"Our Zimbabwe swimming coach, Sue Bradshaw, has supported us throughout the years and urged us to get a scholarship and a good education," he said. "We decided to apply to universities in the U.S. and picked Henderson State because of the swim team, and the aviation department."

Horn, majoring in mass media, added, "We applied to a whole bunch of schools, and Henderson provided us very competitive scholarships.

"Also, we did not want to go to a huge city or school, thinking it would have been too overwhelming for someone who had never been to the United States before."

The two have been dating for quite some time. "It is nice to have someone there to push you and support you," Horn said.

"For us, it just works," she added. "Sometimes we have our days when we disagree about something, but usually it gets sorted out quickly. We can't stay mad at each other for long."

Horn specializes in the freestyle events, while Beahan swims freestyle and butterfly. To say that they have developed into impressive swimmers is an understatement.

Presently, they hold a combined seven Henderson individual school records and are part of relay teams that have established nine additional school records. Some of the broken records had been in place for more than a dozen years.

"Nicole and Grant have done a fantastic job since they arrived on campus a little over a year and a half ago." Head Swim Coach Coak Matthews said. "They are two of the most conscientious and hardest-working individuals to ever swim for the Red Wave."

Continued...

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