2014 has been a big year for American teenager Sierra Schmidt. She’s changed clubs and is now training with the incredible distance group at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. She also progressed through Junior Nationals, Nationals, and the Junior Pan Pacs: the latter of which saw her win the Swimmer of the Meet award after taking titles in the women’s 800 free and 1500 freestyles.
Not only have swim fans taken notice of her big success, but they’ve taken notice of her pre-race ritual. Specifically, Sierra Schmidt spends a good 5 minutes before each race getting funky behind the blocks. She puts her music on, closes her eyes, and seems to melt away into her own world before her races.
Check out the photo vault below to see Tim Binning’s view of just one such of those dance-offs.
Highly effective for anything u want to do in life ; releases mind tensions , opens up new energies ; getting ready totally focused . What else would u have to feel before racing other than ” I am intuned ” .
I love it. From a spectator perspective, starting block dancing is far more entertaining than chest slapping.
Attention Mike Bottom: Next time UM does the water carnival, starting block dancing needs to be added as a scoring event.
She’s awesome. Is she going into her Junior or senior year of high school?
sophmore i think graduates 2017
Michael Phelps even noticed! He posted an instagram video a while ago of her dancing!
Uh oh! I see a dance-off in the future between Sierra and Missy like in that Michael Jackson video for the song “Who’s Bad”! 😉
Very funny!
As long as it’s not Bieber in her ears. 🙂
At Jr. Pan PACs prior to the girls 50 free she taught the female sprinters her moves and how to loosen up. They loved it!! Go Sierra!
I love it. She does what she needs to do to relax and focus, without worrying about what anyone else thinks.