The 20-year-old has successfully taken her love for the water to competitive heights.
“It was an amazing feeling watching my teammate swim to the wall in the last leg of our relay. It was a close race but we knew what we wanted and we put our heads down and raced. Personally, I just trusted my training and executed my race strategy going into that 50 yards I swam as my part of the relay.”“Winning medals is very difficult at this level because everyone’s good," Belanger said. "We’re all NCAA Division I athletes.
“We went to a lot of swim meets monthly. When I was in high school we started going to meets in Toronto and Thunder Bay. I think the one that stood out for me was when I was in Grade 10 at the provincials in Etobicoke. That’s where I had my breakout swim. I won first place in the 100m and 200m breaststroke. I medalled there and that put me first in the province for those events, so then I headed on to Winnipeg for junior national championships that summer.
“I had a really good year at Oakland. I made the Conference team. We won our Conference championship. It was a very strong, dominating swim school but I was looking for something a little bit different and to expand my horizons. I talked to a couple of other coaches and found my place here in Statesboro.”Belanger was nominated last year for Newcomer of the Year for all athletics at Georgia Southern.
“We have a football team here. All the sports here are NCAA Division I. It’s fun in the fall when football season is on and baseball’s really popular. It’s super fun being a student athlete here because we’re all connected, we’re all friends and we support each other in our games and meets. When I was getting recruited here a friend of mine from Calgary who’s now one of my teammates said it's like what you see in the movies. It’s the typical American experience with the sororities.