Southeast Nebraska swimmer Avery Baumann signs with Idaho

FAIRBURY, Neb. - Wilber native Avery Baumann, a senior at Fairbury High School, formally declared her intention to compete in collegiate swimming at the University of Idaho starting next fall on Thursday afternoon in Fairbury. 

“This has been a long process for me so to finally have it official and done is really nice,” Baumann said Thursday. “It takes a village to raise someone, and these people have been a big reason why I’m being able to sign to a D1 school. Having everyone here and being happy for me... I’m very excited.” 

“I’ve watched Avery grow since she was eight years old,” said Dina Scheele, head coach of the BNFF co-op swim team. I’ve coached her in her club team, and her high school team, and just followed her everywhere she’s been swimming. So it’s been exciting, and I’m excited to see how she continues on.” 

Swimmers certainly face some added challenges in this part of the state: Beatrice is the only local school with a pool, so students from four different area schools combine to form the co-op squad BNFF, which Baumann will be a co-captain of this winter.  

All of that means that Baumann must commute from Wilber to Fairbury for school, from Fairbury to Beatrice for practice, and then sometimes up to Lincoln for club competitions – a lot of distance to cover for someone whose biggest strength in the pool is the sprinting events.  

And long distance will certainly be something she will become even more familiar with as she prepares to swim collegiately with the Idaho Vandals – bringing Baumann into a very rare tier of local athletes that have gone on to compete at the NCAA Division I level.  

“I always wanted to go [to college] far from home, just experience the world and see how it is,” Baumann said. “But I knew I’d need a second family if I was going to survive in the outside world, so the team and the coaches at Idaho have been so great, and that’s a big reason why I’m going there.” 

Baumann comes from an athletic family: both of her parents were college athletes, and her mother Lori still holds a few Fairbury records in the shotput and discus. But now Avery holds nearly every Fairbury swimming record, and is also an ace student that sports a 4.0 GPA going into her senior year, with sky-high dreams of becoming an astrophysicist later in life. 

“Growing up I was always an athletic kid, I did basketball, volleyball, softball, just about every sport you can think of, but none of them would really stick until I tried out swimming one summer, and then ever since then it’s stuck to me, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” she said. 

“She has a drive. Always has goals to get better and better and reach those goals, and she’s very good with, supportive of her teammates, and I know they have fun on the team,” said Scheele. “We’ve got four schools combined for our team, and with that setup you make a lot of great friends. It’s not only competitive, it’s also supportive, and everyone comes together as one, which is a lot of fun.” 

Recruiting in the collegiate swimming world can be an arduous process – Avery’s been working towards this day since eighth grade – with databases to enter, interviews to complete, and not to mention many many meters in the pool to check off. But after identifying her second family in Idaho, and officially putting pen to paper with her National Letter of Intent on Thursday, Baumann is ready to begin her final season as a high school swimmer and move on to the long-awaited next chapter of her life story. 

“To anyone out there who’s considering sports in college: be patient, be open-minded, and be confident. These people that are going after you, they want you for you and it’s going to be the school that you never really suspected that’s going to be the one for you.” 

Baumann and her BNFF squad will begin the 2024-25 season at the Tiger Invite in Hastings on December 7.