When Riley Fitzpatrick was just a few years old, she asked her mother for advice after swimming the breaststroke for the first time. It didn’t really go as well as she had hoped.
“My mom said I should never do it again and that I looked like a dying sea turtle,” Fitzpatrick said with a laugh. “It was not pretty. But I think that motivated me to do it even more.”
Fitzpatrick, now a junior at Gloucester Catholic High School, has become one of the top breaststrokers in the state. Make no mistake, her mother, Kristin Einreinhofer Fitzpatrick, a former swimmer at Bishop Ahr High School in Edison (now Saint Thomas Aquinas High School) is her biggest supporter. It was a mom simply trying to steer a daughter toward her strengths. Fitzpatrick took it as a challenge.
“I liked it a lot because I could breathe every stroke,” she said. “It’s one of the more rare strokes, and not a lot of people like it – and I was not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”
Fitzpatrick now loves it. She specializes in the 100-yard breaststroke and the 200 individual medley. On Jan. 24, Fitzpatrick swam a winning time of 2:07.98 in the 200 IM at the South Jersey Interscholastic Swimming Association Invitational at the Gloucester County Institute of Technology. It was almost a full second improvement from her time at the Meet of Champions last year, where she was a state finalist. Fitzpatrick also swam a 1:03.53 in the 100 breast at the SJISA Invitational, which was second to Haddonfield’s Audrey Derivaux. But Fitzpatrick’s time was more than a second better than she swam at last year’s MOC when she placed sixth.
Those sea turtle jokes are long in the past, especially swimming year-round with the South Jersey Aquatic Club and her summer club team at Haddon Glen Swim Club.
“I think I started really improving when I was at Haddon Glen,” Fitzpatrick said. “My coaches there saw that I had some potential and I’ve been working really hard ever since then.”
Fitzpatrick, who wants to study marine biology with the hopes of being a veterinarian at a zoo or aquarium, has become a star at Gloucester Catholic, leading the small co-ed team over the past three seasons.
The Rams have a tough time filling the outer lanes to accumulate bonus points in head-to-head meets, but Fitzpatrick is always good for a couple of individual wins and a pair of great relay races each outing.
“Our team is small … but we’re definitely like a little family,” Fitzpatrick said. “Our pasta dinners are a ton of fun because there’s a lot of team bonding. We’re very close.”
Two years ago, Gloucester Catholic won the Tri-County Conference Classic Division and finished with a 5-2 overall record. This season has been much more challenging, as the Rams were 1-4 through Jan. 25. With a small roster, Fitzpatrick and her teammates keep pushing toward improvement.
“My freshman year, we were the division champs, so it was pretty cool to come in as a freshman and be doing that,” she said. “This year, we’re just trying to get people to have their personal bests and lower their times.”
She always has one fan cheering the loudest.
“My mom really inspires me,” Fitzpatrick said. “My mom was a swimmer. Her mom was a swimmer, so it really inspires me to keep swimming.”
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