Darby Coles kept her fingers crossed over the past year in hopes of getting one last chance in the pool and swimming her senior season at Marshall University.
A lot was still to be determined with the COVID-19 threat hanging in the balance, but Coles was able to have her chance one final time.
Coles made the most of the opportunity this season and finished her swimming career strong by winning the Conference USA Championship in the 50-yard freestyle in 22.97 seconds. She was named to the All-C-USA team in that event.
The senior from Columbus North earned four additional medals when she finished second in the 100 freestyle, swam on the third-place 400 medley relay team, the 200 medley relay team and the 200 freestyle relay team.
“I think for her, as you kind of mature as an athlete, there’s a lot of growth that happens,” Marshall coach Ian Walsh said. “She made a commitment not only to the work ethic side but how she would take care of her body on a daily basis.”
The two summers prior, Coles lived with one of her teammates in South Carolina and coached a summer league team with her. However, she underwent many adjustments in the past offseason. The biggest change was the limited pool access on a daily basis. She said she could get in the pool a few mornings a week, but other than that, she had to rely on dryland training.
“That definitely helped me keep my strength up, but it was tough not having a lot of pool access at that time,” Coles said.
Coles not had to have the right balance of training, but also the balance of diet.
Coles said she moved to an off-campus apartment two years ago. It helped her with a bigger variety of choices in terms of what she wanted to consume rather the limited choices that a dining hall on campus provided.
“I could control more of what I was eating,” Coles said. “I’m pretty big into nutrition, and it’s definitely always a big goal to eat well for me and that transfers pretty well into the water.”
Walsh, who’s completed his third season as coach, said one of the biggest things the team jokes around about is how guarded Coles is, but once you start getting to know her, the layers get pulled back. He said he’s also really impressed with how she carries herself.
With Coles being a senior on a team stacked with freshmen and sophomores, Walsh said even though she wasn’t the most vocal person on the pool deck, she let her actions speak louder than words.
Walsh added that Coles led by example for her other teammates and showed up and put in the work needed in order to be successful.
“I was able to be honest with her, and her as one of the leaders of this program, she was able to give me feedback, not for her individually to help us get to where she wanted to be, but also as a team,” Walsh said. “She’s always been a team player. She’s been an awesome addition to the program and has truly left a mark here for Marshall University swimming.”
Coles is set to graduate in the spring with a major in Health Sciences and a minor in Management.
“I’m job shadowing a dietician for this semester, and really looking into the field of dietetics and also just into sports nutrition as a whole,” Coles said. “I’m starting to look into grad programs that kind of follow that career path.”
While her competitive swimming career might be over, Coles hasn’t ruled out the possibility of keeping swimming as a part of her life.
“I really do have a love for coaching,” Coles said. “I coached the past two summers, and I coach the club team here in Huntington (West Virginia), so I definitely think that I would consider having coaching be kind of a part-time job in my future.”
Coles is appreciative of her time swimming and competing for the program.
“Coming into my freshman year, I was just almost testing the waters, I guess, and not really knowing what I was getting myself into with a Division I college program,” Coles said. “I definitely just made it a goal to be improving year after year. I didn’t want to plateau ever. I feel I was at the perfect place and around the perfect people to do that.”
