Zoe Bartel – 2016 Recreator of the Year & U.S. Junior Olympic swimmer

Emily Brey • October 24, 2016

Zoe Bartel, Fossil Ridge High School Junior, has been named 2016 Recreator of the Year by the City of Fort Collins Recreation Department. This award began in 2013 and it recognizes a person who embodies Recreation’s vision to inspire healthy and engaged lives.

Zoe Bartel competing for the United States. Photo provided by Zoe Bartel

Her pleasant and infectious personality isn’t the only reason that you might’ve heard her name, Zoe is a very competitive and successful swimmer. During the recent summer, she competed in the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, finishing 13th out of a total of 123 swimmers in the 200-meter breaststroke. Following that competition, she traveled to Maui, Hawaii to compete in the 2016 Junior Pan Pacific Swimming Championships; she broke the events 200-meter breaststroke record with a Championship record time of 2:25:46. Along with swimming for the U.S. team she is a proud member of FAST (the Fort Collins Area Swim Team) and Fossil Ridge’s girls team.

Zoe is also a very hardworking student. Taking multiple AP classes, as well as being part of leadership in Fossil Ridge’s FBLA, her schedule is usually jam packed with practices and school work. Zoe is motivated by the support her family, friends, teammates, and coaches, “I think my success has had a lot to do with the environment I’ve grown up in and the goals that I have set. I have been very fortunate to have full support from my parents and coaches for as long as I can remember.”

Zoe accompanied by some of her friends and fellow Fossil students. Photo provided by Zoe Bartel

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About the Contributor

Emily Brey, Sports Editor

Emily Brey is a senior at Fossil Ridge High School who is in her third year on the Etched In Stone staff and is Co-Editor of the Sports BEAT. Emily plays varsity soccer for Fossil and also plays for Arsenal Colorado on the ‘00 Academy team. She is committed to play soccer at Colorado State University - Pueblo and plans to study business and law in college. After attending CSUP, she hopes to attend CU where she will go for her MBA.

Between taking on a full schedule and all of her extracurricular commitments, Emily is a very busy bee this year. Emily is serving as Vice President of FBLA here at Fossil, and is a member of Key Club and NTHS (National Technical Honor Society). She is an ambitious young lady whose reliability, organization, and work ethic has helped her achieve many goals in her time thus far at Fossil Ridge. She is a huge fan of Lana Del Rey and the bands, All Time Low, SWMRS, Waterparks, and The Wrecks. She enjoys spending time outside and organizing things, which relaxes her. When she isn’t covering a story or playing soccer, Emily enjoys being a homebody and watching movies.

The friendly, family-like environment that the journalism program at Fossil encompasses has been something she has valued since freshman year. She would love to be able to continue journalistic work after high school. Emily looks forward to leading the Journalism 1 writers, no matter if that’s in journalism or just life in general. Plus, she hopes to inspire the younger writers to report on other topics besides sports, just because that’s something that she wishes she would’ve done the past two years. Her main goal for the year in journalism is to get better with her coverage, especially with using multiple media platforms. Emily wants to try and expand from her comfort zone of sports writing, hoping to experience writing different journalistic topics.