St. Joseph grad Bowman wants to cap swim career at St. Francis (Pa.) in style

Sabrina Bowman won multiple WPIAL swimming championships during her days at St. Joseph.

When she arrived at St. Francis (Pa.) in the summer of 2016, she set her sights on winning more gold.

The decorated, Division-I performer immediately established herself and has made an impact at numerous meets and invitationals. Bowman won a Northeast Conference championship last year in the 100-yard butterfly and earned silver in the 200 individual medley and bronze in the 100 freestyle.

As a sophomore, she captured the NEC title in the 200 IM.

The high-level results came while battling through shoulder issues, which have impacted her career.

A senior, Bowman is pressing on, and she hopes to cap her collegiate career in style.

“There is a lot of great competition in the conference, and I hope to be up there again at the top,” said Bowman, the NEC runner-up in the 100 fly as a freshman and sophomore. “That’s what I’ve been working for. With my shoulder, I just want to be as ready as I can to compete and do my best. That’s all I can ask for.”

Her run to this year’s NEC meet, set for Feb. 19-22 at Long Island, continues Saturday as St. Francis returns to action at Duquesne.

“I am really excited to get back to competing and racing. That is such a fun thing for me,” said Bowman, who last swam in a meet Nov. 24 at the TYR ’85 Invitational at Liberty in Lynchburg, Va.

Bowman fared well at the meet, which featured the region’s top swimmers among the more than 100 entered in each event.

She placed sixth in the 100 fly in 54.91 seconds, the second-fastest mark in her career next to the 54.39 recorded at last year’s NEC meet.

She added a 10th in the 200 IM and a 19th in the 100 free. The performance earned her NEC Swimmer of the Week honors.

“We were on a half taper, and that really helped us perform well,” Bowman said. “The workouts were helping me get stronger. I wasn’t really expecting to do as well as I did. I was really happy with my times.”

Bowman has suffered a torn the labrum in her right shoulder three times, the latest occurring in Nov. 2018. The first two times, she had surgery to correct the issue. The latest instance, she opted not to have surgery.

“I went to see me surgeon when I hurt my shoulder last year, and he said that if I have surgery, I would be done swimming the rest of my life,” she said. “I decided to continue with my season and then later get the surgery. But I am in the physician’s assistant program at the school, and it’s pretty rigorous. I was in school all summer, so I didn’t really have the time to get the surgery. I thought that if it’s not hurting that much, I could swim through it. So I’ve been doing whatever I can to make it through.”

Bowman said a mix of weight lifting, physical therapy and rest have helped her get through the season, and she always is working with coaches to craft a gameplan for practices and meets to maximize her efforts while maintaining the level of viability she has in the shoulder.

“It’s difficult to know the limits sometimes, but I’ve been getting used to that,” she said.

Bowman’s dedication to finishing her career on a high note has impressed first-year Red Flash coach Phil Hurley.

“Sabrina has health obstacles with her shoulder and academic requirements that take up a lot of her time, but she works hard to get in the training that she needs. Through it all, she’s been phenomenal,” Hurley said. “She’s produced some really fast times and continues to be one of the fastest in the conference.

“We’ve set some really lofty goals with her this year and, based on what we’ve seen so far and the effort I know she’ll give in the back half of the regular season, she’s got a really good shot at turning some heads at championships.”