Karen Turner, 13, already dreaming of Olympic berth

By Bill Stewart

The Lake Oswego Review, Dec 13, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (5 Reader comments)

Karen Turner competes in 50 freestyle at the recent national swimming championships in Atlanta. Turner, who is just 13 years old, recorded a blazing fast time of 23.65 seconds. That mark would have been good enough to win last year’s state high school title.

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Meet Karen Turner, the fastest teenage female swimmer in the state.

That would be saying a lot for a high school senior, but Turner isn’t in high school. Yet, as an eighth-grader at Waluga Junior High, she’s already posting better freestyle sprint times than any high school swimmer in Oregon.

Turner is so fast and improving so rapidly that she could be on pace to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team within two or three years, maybe even sooner.

No one would guess Turner’s prowess as a swimmer just from looking at her. The 13-year-old, who stands between 5-foot-3 and 5-foot-5 (depending on who you talk to), is very quiet and unassuming. And her ego is virtually non-existent.

“I don’t like talking about myself,” she said in a recent interview. “I’ve always been quiet.”

She’s so quiet that Coley Stickles, her coach at the Lake Oswego Swim Club, had to help her through that interview. The coach never had to tell his star pupil what to say, but he did have to coax an occasional response from her.

Turner would rather let her accomplishments speak for themselves, and there’s plenty to talk about in that regard.

She currently holds a total of 10 state records in three different age groups. It’s hard to say what event is her best. Last year, as a 12-year-old, she was ranked in the top five in the nation in the 200 individual medley. She was also in the top 10 in the 100 butterfly and the 100 freestyle.

While competing in the national championships in Atlanta last week, she broke an Oregon state record for her age group when she recorded a time of 23.65 in the 50 freestyle. That time was so fast that it would have been good enough to win a title at last season’s state high school meet.

It doesn’t matter what race is being contested. Just put her in the water and she’ll swim fast.

“The bigger the meet, the better she does,” Stickles said.

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