Marlee and me....

I actually met Marlee Hager a year ago when we did a story on her and her sister, who was a senior in high school at the time and was committed to go swim at McMurry University. It would be the first time the two got to swim together competitively. This story, however, was for something our sports department was doing about graduating seniors at the three local universities. Marlee's story was the most visually appealing of the group, she was teaching swimming to fifth graders in the magnet school that is housed at McMurry in the kids' P.E. class.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I got there, I was afraid she was going to be teaching all of the kids by herself. Luckily there were a bunch of other swimmers there too and Marlee only had a group of four kids. This made it managable to shoot and gave some nice interaction with the kids. I got to spend pretty much the whole period following her around. My favorite pic was when she was teaching them how to start. They were doing it on the diving side of the pool, which is normally a miserable place to shoot during competition, since it is really a cave and there aren't even any lights and the skylights are all over the racing pool. However this time it worked out, there was enough light on her coming from the skylights it made most everything else blend into the background.