Brynna Sentel was walking through a Walmart with Franklin College swim teammate Jacqueline Richard when the dreaded call came from coach Andy Hendricks:
For the second year in a row, there would be no Division III national championship meet for the Grizzlies to compete in.
“We just kind of looked each other in the eyes and we’re like, ‘Man, are you serious? Again?'” Sentel recalled.
“It was really hard to hear those words, that basically your last chance to swim against that kind of competition is just taken away, even though you haven’t done anything wrong and nothing that anybody can do can fix it. It just kind of sucks.”
Richard and Sentel were part of a group of five then-sophomores who represented the Grizzlies at the NCAA meet two years ago, and the group was fully prepared to build upon that initial experience last winter before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of the meet just days before it was set to take place.
This time around, those two and their Franklin teammates got a little bit more advance notice — the NCAA canceled all of the 2021 Division III championships on Feb. 3.
Each blow left a different wound.
“They both hit in different ways,” Sentel said. “Last year, it sucked because it was so last-minute. We were up until the last couple of days and then they called and said, ‘Sorry, guys — you trained for an extra month for no reason!’ This year, it sucks because our only time at nationals was sophomore year, and that’s crazy to think because we’re such a talented group of girls — and boys, too — and we only had one chance to do that in four years of competing.
“We never really wanted to let ourselves get excited about it, so the whole year was like a slow burn of, ‘Is it going to happen? Is it not going to happen?’ And so it hit differently. I think probably this year hurt the worst, because that was going to be my last swim; that was going to be my last competition. And that’s just taken away now.”
Despite having that ultimate goal taken away — Sentel, in particular, was positioned as a top championship contender in the 500- and 1,650-yard freestyle races — the Grizzlies have found other ones to shoot for. As Hendricks noted, the team has HCAC championships to defend; the Franklin men have won seven in a row, the women five.
And while the Grizzlies won’t face the same level of competition in Terre Haute next month that they would have at the Division III meet in Seattle, that has just meant resetting the bar a little bit.
“I think we’re all still very motivated,” Sentel said. “We’re excited for the (HCAC meet) now that we know that that’s our last meet — we’re going to make the best of it. We’ve created new goals; our goal for this year is to win every single event as opposed to just get a national cut.”
So there is still motivation to get to the finish line of what was already an abbreviated season on the front end. Still, the Grizzlies do harbor some resentment — especially since the NCAA still plans to go forward with championship meets at the Division I and II levels.
Hendricks — who doubles as Franklin College’s athletic director and also sits on the NCAA’s swimming and diving committee and says that group always operated as if the D-III meet were going to take place — doesn’t blame his swimmers at all for being bitter.
“I think there’s a sense of Division III being treated unfairly compared to the other divisions,” he said. “Knowing now that D-I and D-II are both happening — that, to some extent, there’s really been a disservice to these athletes, and I can’t help but feel that way.”
Sentel says that she briefly considered taking advantage of the additional year of eligibility that the NCAA is offering to all winter athletes, but the potential payoff wouldn’t have been worth it. One more year at Franklin College wouldn’t have been enough to get an additional degree, so there wasn’t much point in coming back for a swim season that might wind up ending the same way, for all anyone knows right now.
She, Richard and the other Grizzly seniors will just have to settle for knowing that they’ve established a legacy of excellence at the school that can’t be questioned, even if the national accolades never fully came.
“We all still view it as we are the best Franklin College team that we have ever been,” Sentel said. “Each year (Hendricks) has brought in new swimmers, and even when we graduate … we still have the records, we still have our accomplishments.
“Nobody’s ever going to take that away. It’s just we didn’t get a chance to get more, basically.”
