Charleston grad Angie Coe set to swim in Olympics

WCIA — Angie Coe knew she had to swim the race of her life to have any shot of making the Olympics. And she was willing to travel halfway around the world to try.

“I only had one shot, one shot to swim a best time,” Coe said.

So Coe packed her bags for Taiwan, with a meet on June 15 circled on the calendar and after traveling thousands of miles, she did exactly what she had planned. Angie clocked a new personal best 2:14:10 in the 200 IM.

“It’s like a little dream come true you know? I looked at the time and was like, ‘Wow, I did it.'”

Coe thought her time would qualify her for a trip to Paris but since she didn’t hit the Olympic A standard, Angie still needed a recommendation from the Chinese Taipei Swimming Association.

“People were like, ‘You can’t go because this meet doesn’t count’ and so I was like, ‘Okay,'” Coe said. “So I went back to the U.S. June 24. The day I went back to the U.S., they called me, I was in San Francisco and we’re going to make this count and we’re going to let you go.”

It’s a call that changed Coe’s life, with her record breaking performances in prior meets paving the way, making her the highest ranked female swimmer in Taiwan. She was back on a plane to Taiwan to start training just a few days after landing.

“I remember when I was younger, about to fall asleep and I have this memory that I want to stand on the blocks in the Olympic games and feel so proud,” she said. “That’s just always been my dream.”

That dream started for Angie growing up in Taiwan. She moved Charleston in eighth grade to be with her dad, an American who worked at Eastern Illinois University.

“It was really hard at first because I didn’t really speak English so it was hard to communicate with everyone but I had my sister, she also speaks Chinese and she moved to the U.S. a year before me, so she helped me a lot and I felt like it was home because my dad was there,” Coe said.

It didn’t take Coe long to find a pool, joining the YMCA Champaign County Heat, coached by Will Barker.

“It was just the flow and the way she moved through the water,” Barker said. “Not only was it natural, she had great physical form and she works really hard and she just kept getting faster and faster and it was fun to watch.”

Coe is the third Olympian to come out of the Champaign YMCA, joining Tyler McGill and Ema Rajic. Swimming with the Heat paved the way for her to land at the University of Texas, where Angie just completed her freshman year as an honorable mention All-American in the 400 IM finishing 13th in the country, all while helping the Longhorns to a Big 12 Conference championship and National Runner-up finish.

“I felt like I belonged there and people there just make me feel like a family,” Coe said about Texas. “I just feel like I’ve known these girls for so long and I belong there and swimming there is so happy.”

Now she’s just two weeks away from making her dream a reality.

“I want to have fun and enjoy every single moment because this is so big like I want to remember everything and I want to obviously swim my best,” she said.

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