Gators' Vieira makes a splash

Gabby Vieira just was trying to learn how to dive from her father.

Luckily for coach Steve Franklin, the then-8-year-old was swimming during a Gator Swim Team practice.

"I found Gabby jumping off a diving board and swimming to her parents while I was having practice," Franklin said. "I'm always trying to find new swimmers and I just went over and gave them my card. It seems to have been a good choice."

Vieira joined the Gators when she was 8 and had been swimming since she was 6. She still was learning to swim when she joined the Gators, but Franklin said it didn't take long for her to fit in.

"When I saw her swim to her parents, I just saw she could swim," Franklin said. "She started showing a lot of promise about three or four months later. Talents like Gabby don't come around very often."

Submitted photo

The 12-year-old Vieira is a native Brazilian, born in Florianopolis on the island of Santa Catarina, which is a small island just off the south coast of Brazil. She moved to Cape Girardeau at 10 months of age with her parents, Marcio and Iara, in 1998.

Gabby, who just began 7th grade at Central Junior High, has proven to be a unique talent.

She boasts the country's fastest 50-meter butterfly time since Sept. 1, 2009 in her age division -- 29.02 seconds -- according to USA Swimming. She's also fifth fastest in the 100-meter freestyle (1:00.54), fifth fastest in the 200 freestyle (2:10.97), third fastest in the 400-meter freestyle (4:31.21), second in the 800-meter freestyle (9:24.17), second in the 1,500-meter freestyle (17:59.25), second in the 500-yard freestyle (5:00.58) and seventh in the 100-yard backstroke (58.51).

For some perspective, her 500-yard freestyle time would have won the MSHSAA state title and her 100-yard backstroke time would have placed her sixth at the state meet.

Vieira holds 31 Gators records in short course yards pools and 38 Gators records in long course meters pools.

The Gators train swimmers to be versatile in all swimming strokes. Vieira has swam 18 different events this year in the short course yards pools and has achieved Level AAAA in 15 events. Level AAAA is the highest time standard that a swimmer can reach.

Vieira also is Level AAAA in 14 events in long course meter pools. She swims freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and individual medley.

"When she's about 14 or 15, we'll start specializing," Franklin said. "It's too early to tell yet. She's good at everything."

Vieira said her best stroke is the 50-meter butterfly and her favorite event is the 200-meter butterfly.

"My least favorite event is probably the 200-meter freestyle," she said. "It's too short to be a distance race, but too long to be a sprint. It's pretty hard."

Vieira swims year-round with the Gators and said she gets about three weeks off a year. She averages about 17 hours of practice in a typical week. She is a part of the senior training group and meets for practice at least eight times a week. This is the most advanced training that the Gators offer their swimmers, and this is Vieira's first time in the senior group. The practices usually last two hours and change each day.

"Some days we have a hard practice to keep our conditioning good," Vieira said. "Some days we have relaxed practices. Some days we just work on technique."

Excels in the classroom

While Vieira does have to practice several times during the week, she said her schoolwork doesn't suffer.

"School is always before swimming," said Vieira, who is an A honor roll student. "I get home and go straight to practice. After practice, I go home and finish my homework. If I have too much homework, I miss practice to finish it."

Franklin said he changed the training program this summer to see if she could improve her results. He changed the out-of-the-pool workouts and started doing Tabata training, a program that uses high-intensity workouts for 20 to 30 seconds followed by 10 seconds of rest for 4 minutes.

"We started concentrating a little more on kicking and different dry land workouts," Franklin said. "We cut our dry land back to three times a week for 30 minutes. We don't have access to weights, so we work with tubing."

Vieira has improved steadily every year that she's competed with the Gators. Vieira said she does feel pressure to perform well every meet, but winning can be a cure.

"It's real nice," Vieira said about winning. "It gives me a real good sense of accomplishment. It makes me feel really nice about myself."

Franklin said Vieira could see even more improvement if she hits a growth spurt. Vieira is about 5 feet tall, and Franklin said a spurt and hard work could allow her to swim at the collegiate level.

"I'd much rather have kids who are fast that are late bloomers than have an early bloomer that is quick and big," Franklin said. "Bigger kids don't have much wiggle room because they've already matured."

Most of Vieira's records were held previously by Erin Vogt, who swam for the Gators in the early 1990s.

Vogt swam for the University of Arizona in the early 2000s and had an NCAA national qualifying time in the 200-yard butterfly and 400-yard individual medley during the 1999-2000 season.

Vieira hopes to match or better Vogt's standard of success.

"I've been coaching for 36 years," Franklin said. "She's the fastest 12-year-old girl I've coached. And I've had a couple pretty good ones."