SYRACUSE – Staci Woolley had a goal, and the 16-year-old accomplished it. On May 26, the Syracuse resident entered Lake Wawasee at the fish station, located on the south end of the lake, then swam all the way to the channel to Syracuse Lake, ending up at the Syracuse Lake Park. Once finished, she had swam approximately six-and-a-half miles in just over two hours, which was quite a bit faster than she had planned. “I thought it was going to take me three hours or maybe a little bit more,” Woolley said. “So I was pleased with the time.” Accomplishing the feat on the first day of the Memorial Day weekend, she set out at 6 a.m., avoiding heavy traffic. “It was a little bit choppy at times, but it wasn’t cold at all,” she said. Woolley had swam long distances in the past, taking part in a 5K at the Indiana State Open Water Championships last summer, as well as the Aquatic Mile at Center Lake. But taking on this endeavour was much farther than she’d gone before. “I told myself, ‘I’m going to do this,’ but once I got there that morning, I was thinking, ‘That’s a long way across this,’” she admitted. And about two miles in, the idea of finishing felt pretty remote. “About two miles in, I was just like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to finish,’” she said. “‘I feel awful. I can’t do this.’ I hit a wall, but I kept swimming and made it through that.” Along the way, she took some 30-second breaks to defog her goggles and also stopped for about five minutes at the two-mile mark. The long break is when she began to question her quest, but she motored on, as her father and boyfriend followed in kayaks and her boyfriend’s dad was there in a pontoon. “I think I’d do something like this again,” she said. “It wasn’t that bad.”
