Allison Tomsuden remembers being somewhat different from her family members when it came to swimming.
She had reservations as a young child about jumping into a large pool and trying to be the first one to touch the wall at the other end. She’s two years older than Christopher, the youngest Tomsuden sibling, but big brothers Matthew and Timothy were already immersed in the sport back then. Parents Laura and Drew swam competitively in college.
Still, Allison recalled being hesitant to join in.
“When I first started swimming when I was around 5, I did not like it,” she said. "It took a lot of motivation from all of my family and all my friends. But over the years, I really learned to love the sport. I had to work really hard to get to this point, but it all ended up working out.
“It was just hard. Swimming is pretty hard.”
Tomsuden, now 18, has made swimming seem quite the opposite during her competitive career, one that is set to take her to college — the Liberty High School senior is bound for Louisiana State University with plans to swim for the Tigers.
Tomusden signed a national letter of intent last November and made her college commitment official, and said she was smitten with LSU’s Baton Rouge campus after one visit.
The Tigers connected with Tomsuden in the summer of 2018 during the recruiting process, she said, but making the southern trip helped confirm her decision.
“My dad has a job down in Mississippi. One weekend we were all visiting him. ... He was like, ‘Oh, let’s go to LSU and visit,’” Tomsuden said. “When I first stepped on campus, that’s kind of like when I knew that’s where I wanted to go. The campus is really beautiful, and everyone is really welcoming. There’s a lot of tradition there.”
Tomsuden is a member of the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, the same elite swimming program that has produced Olympic champions Katie Hoff and Michael Phelps.
Last summer she earned four first-place finishes and one runner-up at the Maryland Swimming Long Course Championships, dominating the freestyle category with golds in the 100-, 200-, 400-, and 800-meter races. She earned USA Swimming Scholastic All-America honors in September.
In February, Tomsuden competed in the Maryland Swimming Senior Short Course Championships and took second in the 500 free, fourth in the 1,000 free, and fourth in the 1,650 free. She helped NBAC win the women’s title at the meet (the team totaled 16 gold, seven silver, and seven bronze).
Tomsuden is ranked eighth in the state for the Class of 2020 girls swimmers, according to collegeswimming.com. She’s ranked 299th in the nation for her class.
She’s also an accomplished summer swimmer for South Carroll Swim Team — Tomsuden set a Carroll County Invitational record last year for her 15-and-over age group in the 50 butterfly, winning the event in 29.62 seconds. That time broke the previous record set by Tomsuden in 2018 (30.27).
The coronavirus pandemic has forced Tomsuden to make some changes to her offseason training. She said she gets workout information to utilize, and she tries to go running more than she would be without being able to hit the pool.
She’s also keeping her LSU plans close. Tomsuden said she likes the way “Geaux Tigers” looks when spelled out, and she loved following the football team’s run to the national championship last season.
“I love [quarterback] Joe Burrow,” she said. “It was so awesome watching him this season. I’m sad I’ll miss him by a year though.”
Burrow has hopes of being the No. 1 pick in next week’s NFL Draft, while Tomsuden hopes to make a contribution to LSU’s swim team when her college career begins.
Tomsuden said she had three good weeks of winter practice before things changed, but that’s not stopping her from staying busy.
“It’s hard to tell right now with this virus, and who knows how long we’ll be in quarantine,” she said. “I don’t know when we’ll go back, but if I could get up to the point where how well I was doing before then that would be nice.”