As the spring semester comes to a close, sophomore swimmer Sara Krajnovic, a 19-year-old biochemistry major, is ending her competitive swimming career.

Athletes at the community college level are given two years of athletic eligibility to compete in a sport.

Student athletes must maintain at least a 2.0 GPA and take a minimum of 12 academic units. Krajnovic is one of 63 spring student athletes at CRC, according to the Cosumnes River College Hawks athletics website.

The pool is Krajnovic’s second home and she said is going to miss it.

“I’m going to miss competing because I am a competitive person,” said Krajnovic. “I love the atmosphere of a meet.”

She said that she has planned to focus on academics as she transfers to University of California at Davis this fall. She said she will focus on her biochemistry major at UCD because it will take up a lot of her time, and she wouldn’t want to become academically ineligible if she was doing athletics as well.

“Swimming is something I’ve always done, so I decided I wanted to do it in college,” Krajnovic said.

Krajnovic holds records in CRC’s early swim program’s record books. She is the current leader in the 50, 100 and 200 meter breast-stroke events along with a shared 200 medley relay team record.

“The breast stroke is my favorite because it requires a little more technique than the others,” Krajnovic said. “I have a small advantage of being shorter for the breast-stroke because of the shorter sequences.”

With the swim team traveling to events outside of the area, Krajnovic said it’s better for her to get a lot of her homework done on the long trips.

She said that with her three-hour daily practices for swim, school and work she would generally push homework until the weekend if she was able too.

Krajnovic said swim Head Coach Liz Abrams was her main support system.

She said that her support system came from the emails and recommendation letters that Abrams sent. She was always there to listen to about anything, including things not related to swim.

“Last year I didn’t have a hard time balancing my time like I am this year,” Krajnovic said.

She said even though she won’t be competing anymore, she learned that pain is temporary whether it is in the pool or in our everyday life.

“If you just wait a bit and push through it, you’ll eventually get through it and learn from your experience.”