Introducing this week’s Campus Celebrity: Oneida Cooper. Certainly not your typical UNH sophomore, Oneida was born in At such a young age, Oneida has already achieved goals that other competitive swimmers only dream about. Try your hardest to mask your envy, girls!
When and how did you get involved in swimming?
I got involved in swimming all thanks to my mother who was a national swimmer in her day. My middle brother is also a swimmer so he would go off to swimming practice and I would tag along too for the ride and play around before I started getting stroke corrections and mastering the art of the sport. I started swimming competitively from a very young age I swam my first local swim meet when I was 5 and ever since then I had been swimming age-group nationals as well as represented South Africa for the first time when I was 12.
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Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:LucidaGrande”>Do you intend to continue to swim in the future?
I’m not sure how far I will go with swimming, I have achieved a lot in my short swimming career from making the Junior Commonwealth Games, Youth Olympics as well as All Africa Junior Championships, achievements that many dream of doing in their career as swimmers. For now I’m just enjoying the ride not really focusing my main goals on the future.
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Cambria;mso-bidi-font-family:LucidaGrande”>What is the best part of what you do?
I must say the best part of what I do is definitely surrounding yourself with determined, motivated and driven people. You don’t come across a group of people very often who are all hard working and strive for greatness, which makes you more determined to better yourself and yourself in the sport. I became involved in swimming because my mother wanted us to get involved in as many sports as possible because growing up my brothers and I were very active and enjoyed anything that involved being outdoors and active. Ultimately what I want people to get from my success in swimming is not only that by getting involved in a sport you do stay out of trouble and you learn many life skills such as time management and a good work ethic, it opens up many doors.
Through swimming I have been given the opportunity to travel the world be exposed to many different cultures, make life long friendships and networks as well as being given the honor of being a youth leader motivating the youth to get involved in sport especially those from less fortunate backgrounds, allowing them to believe that anything is possible with a simple dream worth enduring,