{"id":33139,"date":"2013-01-14T21:28:08","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T02:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/uncategorized\/2013\/01\/lia-neal-a-humble-star-by-swimming-world-intern-charlie-shea\/"},"modified":"2015-08-20T21:01:47","modified_gmt":"2015-08-21T04:01:47","slug":"lia-neal-a-humble-star-by-swimming-world-intern-charlie-shea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/lia-neal-a-humble-star-by-swimming-world-intern-charlie-shea\/","title":{"rendered":"Lia Neal: A Humble Star By Swimming World Intern Charlie Shea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>By Swimming World Intern Charlie Shea <\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Check out all of the 2013 CeraVe Invitational race videos, features and daily recaps on the <a href=http:\/\/tv.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/events\/2013-cerave-invitational target=_blank > 2013 CeraVe Invitational Event Landing Page. <\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p>PISCATAWAY, New Jersey, January 13. LIA Neal was born in Brooklyn, NY, on February 15th, 1995 and began swimming at age 6 for Asphalt Green Unified Aquatics (AGUA). <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I first realized I was pretty good around the time Junior Nationals rolled around during 2009 in Guam,&#8221; Neal said.  Although she didn&#039;t place at the event, she persevered in her training, and by the time the World Junior Championships in Lima arrived in 2011, she was in a position to dominate. And dominate she did.  She won gold medals in the 100m freestyle, 4x100m freestyle, 4x200m freestyle, and silvers in the 50m freestyle and 4x100m freestyle.  <\/p>\n<p>Perseverance is something that Neal emphasizes while talking about the keys to her swimming success. &#8220;You need to fail before you can succeed, and that makes the successes even sweeter,&#8221; she said.  At the CeraVe Invitational, her &#8220;failures&#8221; are become more prevalent, but it&#039;s not because she&#039;s swimming poorly. It&#039;s because she&#039;s leaving her comfort zone. <\/p>\n<p>While she is traditionally a sprint freestyle specialist, during the Invitational she is swimming more &#8220;off events:&#8221; events that she normally doesn&#039;t get the opportunity to do. For example, the breaststroke or butterfly.  &#8220;It&#039;s really fun to be able to get out and swim some of these off events&#8230; Having fun is really what it&#039;s all about,&#8221; explained Neal. <\/p>\n<p>Just because Neal classifies an event as an &#8220;off event,&#8221; doesn&#039;t mean she can&#039;t win it, though. She did just that in the Women&#039;s 100m butterfly.  She didn&#039;t perform quite as well in the 200m breaststroke, or the 400m freestyle, falling short of the championship round.  Neal also added 2 ninth-place finishes in the Women&#039;s 200 IM and the 500m Medley Relay.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This meet is really fast this year,&#8221; clarified Neal. &#8220;But it&#039;s still really laid back and easygoing compared to the Olympics.&#8221;  Frankly, most meets probably are.<\/p>\n<p>Lia placed fourth in the 100m freestyle at the Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, in June 2012. It was just good enough to qualify for the US Olympic Women&#039;s 4x100m freestyle relay team. &#8220;That was the happiest moment of my swimming life: making the team,&#8221; said Neal.<\/p>\n<p> The women&#039;s 4x100m freestyle relay went on to win a bronze medal at the 2012 London Games behind the Australian and Dutch teams. The US team was composed of Missy Franklin, Jessica Hardy, Lia Neal, and Allison Schmitt, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>Since the Olympics, Neal had to adjust to her newfound celebrity. In her own words though, &#8220;it hasn&#039;t been that bad.&#8221; The only time she was ever recognized on the street was &#8220;&#8230;in the weeks right after the Olympics, and that was only like once.&#8221;   In an American culture that emphasizes first place above all else, Neal&#039;s third-place bronze could easily have been overlooked. Is Neal bitter? No; in fact it doesn&#039;t bother her. &#8220;It&#039;s kind of a blessing in disguise.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What perhaps draws the most attention to Neal is not her blistering times, but her race. Not her swim races, her ethnic race.  Lia Neal is a black swimmer.  Why is that significant?<\/p>\n<p>Recent studies by USA Swimming estimate that up to 70% of African-American children don&#039;t know how to swim. In fact, Neal was only the second woman of African-American descent to ever make the US Women&#039;s Olympic Swim Team. &#8220;I didn&#039;t really think about it at first, but, after the Olympics, the media kept bringing it up, and that&#039;s when I really realized it,&#8221; Neal said. &#8220;I guess I&#039;m kind of a role model.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>There aren&#039;t many role models better than her.  Neal attends Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private high school in New York; the alma mater of such notable women as Eunice Kennedy Shriver and (gulp) Lady Gaga.  Neal is also incredibly kind and considerate, always available for a photo or autograph with a perfect smile stretched across her face.   <\/p>\n<p>Neal hasn&#039;t become distracted from her swimming, though, as evidenced by continued displays of excellence in her core events: sprint freestyle. She took 1st in the women&#039;s 50 and 100m freestyle at the CeraVe Invitational. <\/p>\n<p>While the Olympics have forever changed Neal&#039;s life, she hasn&#039;t. She continues to live her life to the fullest, and no one should want it any other way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Swimming World Intern Charlie Shea Check out all of the 2013 CeraVe Invitational race videos, features and daily recaps on the 2013 CeraVe Invitational Event Landing Page. PISCATAWAY, New<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,17,4],"tags":[53991],"class_list":["post-33139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-commentary","category-zzzzzzzzz","tag-2013-cerave-invitational"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>Lia Neal: A Humble Star By Swimming World Intern Charlie Shea - Swimming World<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/lia-neal-a-humble-star-by-swimming-world-intern-charlie-shea\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lia Neal: A Humble Star By Swimming World Intern Charlie Shea\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Swimming World Intern Charlie Shea Check out all of the 2013 CeraVe Invitational race videos, features and daily recaps on the 2013 CeraVe Invitational Event Landing Page. 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