Livingston County Swimmer of the Year going straight to college competition
Jason Black has coached numerous college-bound swimmers at Brighton, but none have taken Victoria Schreiber’s career path.
Just two months after completing her high school career, Schreiber will be competing at the college level for Brigham Young University. She graduated a semester early from Brighton.
It’s becoming somewhat common, particularly in football, for athletes to graduate early to enroll in college in January and get a jump start on training at the next level. They don’t actually begin playing in games until the next fall.
“I’ve never heard of kids going from graduating to competing in college,” said Black, speaking not only for his Brighton program but high school athletics in general.
Schreiber is one of the top swimmers developed at Brighton. In her case, she was truly developed at Brighton, swimming in the local program and for the middle school before coming to high school. Many other top swimmers in Livingston County train in Ann Arbor before high school and during the offseason.
“She’s been part of the program for, basically, since she started swimming with the club team and middle school team,” Black said. “I’ve always had my eye on her. She’s done amazing things. I’m not going to say back then I knew what would happen, but I’m not surprised.”
Schreiber is the Livingston County Girls Swimmer of the Year for the third straight season after producing four top-five finishes in the state Division 1 meet and setting two school records in her individual events.
Schreiber broke the 200-yard freestyle mark of 1:51.07 set by Taylor Seaman in 2014 with her time of 1:50.56 in prelims. She went on to place fourth in that event in 1:51.24.
ALL-COUNTY TEAM: Meet the 2022 All-Livingston County girls swim and dive team
She took down the 500 freestyle record of 4:57.23 set by Chloe Reed in 2018 by swimming 4:57.09 in prelims and then 4:56.03 to place second in the finals.
Schreiber also helped Brighton place fifth in the 200 freestyle relay and fourth in the 400 freestyle relay.
With six top-four individual finishes in state meets, Schreiber tied the county record shared by former Brighton swimmers Marie Blanchard (1982-85), Marybeth Hall (2006-08) and Seaman (2014-16).
Schreiber didn’t come to Brighton expecting to put her name among the school’s all-time greats.
“To be honest, I just wanted to become a better teammate and be able to support all my friends and help them support great things,” she said. “Through that, they helped me achieve things I never thought I could.”
And now she’s off to BYU to swim at the NCAA Division I level right away.
“I’ll be competing for them, so that’s super exciting,” Schreiber said. “It’s crazy. It’s a bittersweet moment. I could never imagine this.”
Schreiber has a family connection to BYU.
“They’re amazing people,” she said. “The coaches and teammates are amazing. Both my brothers are there. They just support great things.”
Contact Bill Khan at wkhan@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillKhan.
This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Livingston County Swimmer of the Year Victoria Schrieber headed to BYU
