Briana Jay Emig is an academic All-MAC and an All-MAC first team swimmer. She is in her third year as an undergraduate student at Eastern Michigan University, majoring in Psychology and Communications.
Every year Emig has been at Eastern, she has been a part of the winning tradition that continues on under coach Peter Linn of the swimming and diving program.
“She’s much better,” Linn said. “She’s improved significantly. She’s a good swimmer. She is across-the-board good.”
Emig is a freestyle distance swimmer. She swims in the 400-yard freestyle relay, 500 and 200 freestyle and in the 1,000 freestyle.
She already has made the cut for the U.S. Olympic trials in the 400 and 800 freestyle and is one point shy of making the cut for the trials in the 400 individual medley and 200 fly.
“I can’t really picture my life without swimming,” Emig said. “I’ve been doing this since I was seven years old.”
Emig said she first started swimming with a club team in Pennsylvania. She said Ambridge, the high school she graduated from, didn’t have a swimming team.
Linn said, “She is an intensely focused person about her training and competing.”
Despite no high school swim team, Emig still found recruitment from different colleges including Eastern. However, she always knew that she was going to swim for Linn and EMU.
“I don’t think I would be where I am at if I weren’t somewhere else or at any other college,” Emig said. “Until I got to EMU, I thought I wanted a huge school. I feel I can get more learning done at a small school. I think our academics are good because of our student to teacher ratio.”
Along with the small school feel EMU brings, Emig was inspired to come here to follow in the footsteps of her older cousin, Kristin Roach. She was a backstroke swimmer for EMU, who graduated in April 2010.
“Growing up, I looked up to my cousins,” Emig said. “They got me started with swimming.”
Linn said he remembers Emig walking around at meets when she would watch her cousin compete at EMU. Emig got to swim with Roach,when she was a freshman and Roach was a senior.
“My goal, ever since I was little, was to reach the Olympic trials,” Emig said. “In high school, I started to believe that it wasn’t realistic,
but after awhile I started to see improvement in my time.”
She said it wasn’t until she came to Eastern when she realized she could reach her goal of reaching the Olympic trials again.
“Swimming here at Eastern has helped me refocus,” Emig said. “I’ve learned how to react to situations better. I’ve matured at college in general. I’ve gotten better at treating my body better.”
She said Linn’s program really works.
“As long as you put in the work and be committed to it, you’ll improve,” Emig said.
Emig said for this year she is looking forward to making the 2012 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships held in Auburn, Ala. March 15-17. She fell just shy of reaching the NCAA Championships last year.
Emig’s next meet is against Oakland University at 1 p.m. Saturday at Jones Natatorium.
