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Awake by 3:40 am. Driving to the Oak Ridge pool nine times a week. Adhering to a very complex diet. Seventeen-year old Colby Brown is not your typical Campbell County High School Senior. In many ways.
He attends school at CCHS. Though, he’s a member of the Clinton High School Dragon Swim team. However, if Campbell had a swimming program, the youngster who lives a stone’s throw away from CCHS would be on it.
TOP PHOTO: Colby Brown (L) with his future college coach, Aaron Mahaney.
Not many teens have a 7:30 pm bedtime but Brown does. Once the alarm sounds soon after 3:30 am, the clock is ticking. He packs what he needs for the day and drives to the Oak Ridge Civic Center for his three-plus mile swim. At 6:30 am, he’s headed back home to pick-up his two brothers, Logan and Ethan, to drop them off for school at Jacksboro Middle. That leaves him just enough time to squeeze in getting ready for his day and then hustle over to the high school for Ryan Browning’s first-period class on Government. After that class, he spends the rest of the day attending classes at Roane State.
Brown is six-feet tall, a bit above average for a swimmer, and weighs a very fit 155-pounds. Given that, you’d think he doesn’t eat his share of calories. However, that’s not quite the case. He says, “It seems like I am constantly eating. My very complex diet contains a lot of salmon, rice, steak and chicken totaling to a daily intake of 4,500 calories.” That’s about double the average intake for a person six-feet tall.
Brown is ready to swim
For a young man with a schedule that’s not quite for everybody, he is getting good results out of his almost eight-year swimming career. He’s a second-time state qualifying swimmer and has his highest state ranking to date at 45th. But perhaps the best barometer of his progress is that he will sign later today to swim for the University of Montevallo Falcons out of Montevallo, Alabama.
Oh, and there’s something else about Colby Brown that sets him apart. In the swimming world, the individual swimmer and their family are generally tasked with courting a college for swimming and scholarship opportunities. Not so in Brown’s case. It was Brown who was courted by the Falcons Head Swimming Coach, Aaron Mahaney.
Brown, with his unique schedule, workout routine and complex diet, is no doubt carving out his place in Cougar sports history. Even if he has to double as a Dragon to do it. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 12/12/2018-6AM-PHOTOS COURTESY OF COLBY BROWN)
Awfully proud of this young man….He has worked very hard for many years and is reaping the rewards for his efforts. His mom and dad deserve recognition for this as well…They have spent many hours outside of Recreation and aquatic centers. His parents have worked hard at swim meets volunteering for multiple teams as runners, timers and licensed stroke n turn judges as well as refereeing. This is a special day for all of the Campbell County swim families.