Peyton Manning opened Lucas Oil Stadium. But multiple Pro Bowler Andrew Luck was the Indianapolis Colt with the more stellar career there.
Duquesne senior Haley Scholer competed at Lucas Oil Stadium on June 20. It had nothing to do with luck.
And everything to do with her skill.
Central Bucks South grad Scholer swam in the U.S. Olympic Trials in front of 25,000 people in Indy, finishing a commendable 34th out of 62 invitees in the 200-meter backstroke.
“It was unlike any meet I’ve ever been to. Walking into a football stadium was crazy. It was such a great experience and I’m so happy I got to go,” she exclaimed. “The pool facilities were perfect.
“Something I took from that meet is: it’s OK to not go best time and it doesn’t make me less of a swimmer,” she reflected. “It doesn’t nullify all of the hard work that I did. I have only one more year of swimming. Having fun with it, and using the other people that I’m racing to push myself, has been a big thing for me.”
“Nothing is a given. But her work ethic and competitive nature are top notch,” observed Jeff Lake, her swim coach at CB South. “On top of that, college events suit her abilities better than high school events. She made the trials in the 200 backstroke. We don’t have a 200 backstroke in high school.”
It took a bit to get used to swimming under a 270-foot ceiling and an enormous scoreboard but Scholer knocked over one-third of a second off her personal best in the 100-meter backstroke with a 1:02.36 time trial.
She punched her Olympic trials ticket last August, after recording a cut time of 2:13.41 in the 200-meter backstroke at the Eastern Senior Zone Championships in Buffalo. Scholer won the event, becoming just the second Duquesne Duke to record an Olympic trial cut time.
An All-American Scholar Athlete who carries a 3.9 GPA in marketing, Scholer concluded an eye-popping season on March 14 when she came in third in the 200-yard backstroke (1:56.57) at the College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America National Invitational Championships in Florida.
“Back is the one I enjoy the most. I saw my times drop a lot faster,” Scholer shared. “I can really push myself in backstroke differently than I can in other strokes.”
“She was a coaches’ dream,” Lake remembered. “It sounds like I am making this up, but I’m not: She came to practice every single day, ready to work, happy and never complained about a set or a workout. She saw how each set would make her better, even if it wasn’t in her primary stroke.”
Three weeks before Indy, Scholer won gold in the 200-yard backstroke (1:55.48) at the Atlantic 10 conference championships and took home a silver in the 800-yard free relay. The gold was a breakthrough after she won bronzes in the 200-yard back during both the 2022 and 2023 conference championships.
Scholer earned the A-10’s Performer of the Week last Halloween. She won three individual events at the A-10 classic: the 100- and 200-yard backstroke to join the 200-yard individual medley.
“Having training partners push me every day has been super helpful and I am very thankful for them,” Scholer credited for the season’s success. “I work very closely with Dave Sheets, my coach. I have to thank him a lot for helping me train at my best and for creating the plan that has gotten me to this point.
“I’ve never been one that loves to do underwaters but something that I’ve been working on since I’ve come to college: to lengthen my walls and my underwaters,” she added. “A lot has to do with my mindset. I am a very positive person and I like to have fun with everything that I am doing.”
Scholer’s swimming journey didn’t begin at birth … but started awfully close. She took Mommy and Me classes as an infant.
“I never really did any other sports. My swim lesson instructors said to my mom, ‘Your kids seem to really enjoy it.’ My mom put us on swim team,” she remembered. “That is how it started. We hopped around to a couple of teams until we found one that we really liked. Here I am.”
Scholer arrived at Duquesne with law school in the back of her mind. While law school admission would be a slam dunk with Scholer’s transcript, those initial plans have changed. “I’d love to be a college swim coach,” she shared. “That would be the dream.”
She spent much of June as a counselor at Texas A&M’s swim camp, an invaluable experience for her desired career path. “Our job was watching the kids do all of the drills, correct them, give them pointers, record them and review the videos with them. I was lucky,” Scholer explained. “I got to be a video reviewer so I got lots of practice in trying to explain things in different ways to kids and to help them understand how to go faster. It was really cool to see a different side of coaching: the more technical side.”
“There was a time where we were debating what we wanted her to swim to make states, because she could have made it in so many events,” Lake concluded. “We knew she had distance and backstroke is her best stroke so put her in a distance backstroke and she is going to crush it.”
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