Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Kelsey Holmgaard, a high-school aged homeschooled swimmer from Roanoke County, swims for the CCA Marlins Swim Club, based at North Cross School.

Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Holmgaard got a relatively late start to competitive swimming, starting on a summer league at age 9.

Laura Holmgaard remembers when her daughter, Kelsey, possessed a highly visible trepidation toward an assortment of aquatic structures.

"Kelsey would run from the pool and scream and scream and scream," she said. "Then you'd go to the beach and [she'd] run from the waves and scream and scream. ... She would scream bloody murder anywhere near the water."

How times have changed.

Now 16, Kelsey Holmgaard feels as much at home in a pool as Jeff Gordon on a racetrack.

She's been swimming for more than six years in pools throughout the Roanoke Valley and become a force to be reckoned with along the way.

It's hard for Kelsey, who started swimming with the Roanoke County-based North Lakes Swim Club the summer she turned 9, to fathom ever being so terrified of the water when she was a toddler.

"It is really hard to believe," said Kelsey, who is home schooled and lives with her family in Northeast Roanoke County. "You think about it and you're like, 'Wow, how could I be scared of the water?' I enjoy being in the water now so much."

That's a fact evidenced by the amount of time she spends in the pool. Kelsey swims five days a week and twice on Tuesdays and Thursdays, days when she wakes up at 4 a.m. for an early morning practice.

Much of her time is spent with the Carter Center Aquatics Marlins club at North Cross School in Southwest Roanoke County. Holmgaard joined the club in September. She has also swum on and off with the YMCA of Roanoke Valley since 2004.

A self-professed fan of sleeping in, Kelsey has to remind herself sometimes why she's willing to sacrifice sleep and social events for her chosen sport.

"It's just always been something that I really love to do. When I'm upset or anything that's what I enjoy doing," said Kelsey, who played volleyball, basketball and soccer when she was younger. "Sometimes in practice when it's a really hard practice you're like, 'Why do I like this sport?' But then again, you always come back and you're like, 'Well, I have a passion for this and I really love to do it.' "

Kelsey has shared that passion with others, including her 8-year-old brother, Isaac, who started swimming in summer leagues about two years ago. She has also helped younger swimmers the past two summers at North Lakes, where she got her start under coach Mich Peters.

Peters encouraged Kelsey to swim year-round not long after she began taking lessons.

"The minute she entered the water she was what we call 'very coachable,' " said Peters, who is also the swim coach at Northside High School. "She grasped onto everything that I told her to do and did it. It seems very natural to her. I knew right away she was going to be one of the good ones."

In July, Kelsey competed at the Roanoke Valley Aquatic Association's city-county meet, which features many of the best swimmers in Southwest Virginia. She won all five of her events -- the 50 backstroke, the 50 freestyle, the 100 freestyle, the 50 breast stroke and the 100 individual medley -- in the 15- and 16-year-old age group.

"Sometimes I can't believe that I placed like that because there's so many talented swimmers in city-county," she said.

Kelsey hopes to eventually swim in college on a scholarship. She's already done more in the pool than her mother ever thought was possible.

"It's hard to believe that my child that used to scream anywhere near the water," Laura Holmgaard said, "is like a fish herself."