This Shorewood swimmer wanted to challenge herself more. That led Amie Barrow to eye the 2024 Olympic Games.

Aminata "Amie" Barrow has already gone from a canceled swim season in Shorewood to the state championship podium to the Ivy League championship meet.

Now, how about qualifying for the Olympics for Gambia?

The 19-year-old pre-med student who just completed her first year at Brown University will swim at the world championships later this month to try to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

She’s eligible for two reasons. One, after a successful freshman season at Brown, Barrow posted the kind of times in the breaststroke that show her potential to qualify as a representative for Gambia, the smallest country in mainland Africa.

And two, Barrow’s father, Kemo, is 100% Gambian.

“I wanted to do something bigger and challenge myself a bit more,” Barrow said. “The idea of swimming internationally seemed fun. Gambia was a great way to do that.”

Barrow said her father was excited about her prospects for competing for Gambia, where he was born and raised.

Amie Barrow's first step to qualify for 2024 Olympics in Paris comes at world championships in Japan

The FINA World Aquatics Championships will be held July 14-30 in Fukuoka, Japan. It’s the next step for Barrow to represent Gambia for the first time.

If Barrow makes it, she will be the first Olympic swimmer who was coached by Dave Westfahl. He has coached for 33 years at Shorewood Swim Club.

The qualifying process for Barrow will be different from the U.S. athletes who will compete in the trials next June in Indianapolis.

Barrow’s mother, Monna Arvinen-Barrow, said the Gambian Olympic Committee will make decisions on what sports they want to compete in at the Olympics through certain qualifiers. When it comes to swimming, Arvinen-Barrow said, the Gambian National Olympic Committee (NOC) will send athletes through the Universality Place pathway — or, two athletes, one woman and one man — in one event each.

Barrow graduated from Shorewood in 2022 in great form after enduring swim seasons that were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Barrow is accomplishing her swimming goals at Brown University

Barrow topped the podium at the WIAA state championship in November 2021 in the breaststroke. She then won the Wisconsin state USA Swimming titles in the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke in July 2022 (with times of 1:13.30 in the 100 and 2:37:34 in the 200).

After that, Barrow walked on at Brown, swam the 100 and 200 breaststroke and 200 individual medley, and then made the prestigious Ivy team. At the Ivy League Championships, Barrow took 16th place in the 100 breaststroke.

“That was a pretty big accomplishment for me,” Barrow said. “I was happy with my swims but they were also times I knew I could go, and times I’ve been working towards for a long time. That accomplishment just got delayed because of COVID. So it was nice to accomplish these goals that I had.”

Barrow's work ethic is second to none, her longtime swim coach says

At Brown, Barrow’s academic concentration is in computational biology and economics. She plans to balance her school work and athletics even while training for the Olympics.

“The Olympics wasn’t really a goal of mine until relatively recently,” Barrow said. “I didn’t forget I was Gambian or anything; I just never considered that as a real possibility. I’m not going to take a semester off. I want to be a doctor and that’s a long process. And I want to be on track. I think I balanced my academics and stuff really well last year and I improved a lot by my second semester.”

Westfahl has been impressed, but not surprised, by Barrow’s accomplishments in the past two years. After coaching her for more than a decade, he knows Barrow’s work ethic stands out as much as her talent.

“Her drive,” Westfahl said. “I have coached very few athletes with that drive that she has. It comes from internal. I don't want to call her a perfectionist, but she demands a lot of herself. As a coach, I often have had to take a step backwards because she demanded enough of herself that I needed to take it a little bit easy on her.

“She has a lot of physical talent. Growing up, she was also heavily involved in gymnastics. And I think that gave her an incredible body awareness and a body sense that allows her to make changes in her technique and in her form and her skills that many other athletes may not have.

“She’s an incredibly hard worker and incredibly dedicated.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Shorewood swimmer Amie Barrow aims for 2024 Olympics, represent Gambia