Homer Alaska - Sports

Photographer: Michael Armstrong, Homer News Homer News Mariner swimmer Alder Fletcher enjoys swimming, but for his college career he's looking at theater programs.

For Homer High School Mariner swimmer Alder Fletcher, that point came at two revelatory moments. First, he got faster than his closest, lifelong competitor. The son of Barrett and Tamara Fletcher, Alder, 16, is the younger brother of Iris Fletcher, a Mariner girls swimmer with the class of 2009.

"I didn't enjoy swimming for a long time until right before freshman year when I became faster than my sister," Fletcher said.

More recently, swimming became even more enjoyable when Fletcher realized something about the motion of bodies through water.

"I've always been fascinated by flight," Fletcher said. "Swimming is as close to independent flight as most humans come."

It's not exaggerating to say Fletcher is a lifelong swimmer. He's been in water since birth.

"Roughly a minute after I was born I was put in a tub of water," he said.

Fletcher began seriously swimming about age 5 with the Kachemak Swim Club. He took up the sport at his parents' insistence that he do some physical activity. His sister swam, so it was convenient that he swim, too.

On the Mariner swim team, Fletcher swims strongest in the back stroke, butterfly and freestyle events.

"It's my favorite," he said of the backstroke. "It's the one that feels most elegant."

He admits he's not strong at the breast stroke — all that twisting and turning. For him, it's full steam ahead freestyle.

"I don't rotate. I don't teeter-totter," Fletcher said. "I just plow."

As a senior on the Mariner team, Fletcher also has come to understand another lesson in athletic existentialism: going beyond what you think are limits. In long events, Fletcher has learned to push through the wall.

"I found that during the last 25 (yards) I had enough to sprint," he said. "It taught me that there is that last little bit you can give — you have to keep going no matter how tired, no matter how fatigued you are."

Athleticism complements another of Fletcher's interests — his real passion, acting.

"Swimming represents a kind of fluidity of movement that can be useful on the stage," Fletcher said.

Last spring, he had one of the title roles in the Homer High School production of "David and Lisa." In the summer of 2009 he appeared in Pier One Theatre's main stage production of "The Importance of Being Earnest" — a production directed by Carolyn Norton that used a lot of young actors in the Oscar Wilde play. Fletcher also was in another main stage Pier One play, "Much Ado About Nothing."

Swimming versus acting? It would be a hard choice, Fletcher said, but for his college career, he's looking at theater programs.

"That's what I hope to do with my life," Fletcher said.

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong@homernews.com.