Livonia — Alarms across the city go off at 4:30 a.m., and frenzied Livonia girls peel out of their driveways for morning swim practice for the Stevenson Spartans.
Senior and junior swimmers with driver’s licenses make sure the underclassmen—intentionally coupled as Big Sisters and Little Sisters—all have rides to school.
The Spartan girls swim team has had decades of incredible success. Livonia’s three private swim clubs and two competitive swim organizations feed into the Stevenson program, refreshing the team with incoming freshman already acclimated to the sacrifices required to compete at the highest levels.
Swimming is different from football, hockey, or baseball. Yes, these young women swim against their in-city rivals, Livonia Franklin and Churchill, but they’re also competing against a more frightening opponent: themselves.
Swimmers work to beat their own best performances. At the Olympics or international competition, the world’s greatest swimmers stare at the scoreboard, scrutinizing their times after each heat. This is no different at the high-school level. Spartan swimmers can immediately tell you their best times in a specific event. Beating their best time even by a split-second is an obsession.
The Stevenson Spartans are led by veteran swimmers who’d battled through years of 12-hour school days with crack-of-dawn and after-school practices, visualization and weight training sessions, and two swim meets a week. Add in Saturday morning practices and team dinners, and these girls become more than just faces in the hallway but an elite crew of Livonia’s best young women, with some of the most dedicated and impassioned parents in the city.
The Spartans are a team undergoing an enormous change for the first time in decades. Former coach Greg Phil, who retired at the end of the 2024 season, led the team for over 35 years, sending an endless fleet of swimmers to states each year. He coached Olympic Gold medalist Sheila Taormina and current Olympic hopeful McKenzie Siroky. Their names emblazon the record board over the pool and serve as swim gods looking over the current team.
Tyler Cederlind, a former collegiate swimmer with over a decade of coaching experience, was hired to fill the massive shoes left by Phil and immediately brought renewed passion and a more animated energy to the team. Cederlind was already well-acclimated to the program after quietly shadowing Phil during the 2024 season while also coaching the well-decorated boys team with his son on the roster.
Cederlind, aware of the remarkable list of former athletes who’ve matriculated out of the program, named former Spartan swimmer Brynn Keberly as his assistant coach. A no-nonsense motivator, Keberly has already coached a club team and appears primed to lead a high school program of her own one day.
But the real leaders of this team are the captains. Five outstanding seniors—all decorated four-year veterans—were chosen by their peers to lead the team: Sydney Trout, Mary Jane Fryberger, Abigail Jonca, Joan Foster, and Isabella Murray.
The captains carry on team traditions. But their leadership goes further than the pool deck.
Teenage life these days is hard; much harder, in fact, than it was for previous generations. Incoming freshmen and underclassmen can feel isolated and alienated. Entering high school can be worrisome, especially for teenage girls looking for friends and searching for acceptance.
Not long ago, my daughter, Captain Isabella Murray, was an incoming freshman Spartan swimmer navigating the social hierarchy of the school and the team. What a difference it makes to a 14-year-old girl when the senior captain and best high school swimmer in the entire nation knows your name, gives you a special nickname, talks to you in the hallways, on the deck, and between heats.
This tradition of leadership is continuously handed down from each class to the next, and the new senior captains carry the torch for the next class.
During one recent swim meet, I stood on the deck behind Coach Cederlind as he quickly made lineup changes to his relay teams and point heats like a baseball manager working his lineup. Captain Sydney Trout stood at the blocks directing the warm-up heats, and it was impossible to not see this 17-year-old as a future coach as she shouted instructions to underclassmen.
During the heats, Captain MJ Fryberger was cheering on underclassmen with the zeal of a challenger, instilling energy and fun into every swimmer in her orbit. Her mom, Marylu, is one of the active swim moms in the program doing extraordinary heavy lifting behind the scenes.
Prior to the meet, Senior captain Abigail Jonca, a two-sport athlete at Stevenson, leads the team in a motivational cheer and was making sure underclassmen were aware of their heats.
The last captain on Stevenson is Joan Foster, a fierce swimmer with demigod momentum. Watching her swim can be a white-knuckling experience, as she appears to gain velocity in longer heats, suggesting a hidden reserve of energy she taps to hit breaking speed.
These captains will bequeath their tradition to the next class soon, and the future of Spartan Swimming is bright. Lexie Jolly, an incredibly fast and strong freshman, appears primed to one day wear the captain’s star.
Once upon a time many years ago, a little girl said to me, “Dad, I’m going to swim for Stevenson one day.” That little girl became a freshman swimmer at Stevenson and said to me, “Dad, I’m going to be a captain one day.”
My God, I love the Stevenson Spartans swim team. They have a swimmer who carries my heart.
Jay Murray is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
