BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — Beata Nelson isn't the first person to question her faith because she found her world unusually cruel.
Nor is she the first among us to misplace her passion for doing something that typically gave her great joy.
But carrying both burdens at roughly the same time — one privately spiritual; the other openly psychological — seems particularly daunting.
This is a story about how Nelson reclaimed those emotional anchors, a process defined by trial, error and honest reflection.
This is a story about how Nelson re-emerged as a primary force for the Wisconsin women's swimming and diving team, someone on the cusp of joining a tiny, exclusive, accomplished club.
When the Badgers compete in the NCAA meet March 20-23 in Austin, Texas, Nelson will be in position to become just the second swimmer in program history to win an individual title.
The junior from Madison goes into the meet as the collegiate record-holder in the 100-yard backstroke (49.67 seconds). In fact, she's the only woman in history to break 50 seconds in the event five times.
Nelson is looking to join Maggie Meyer on the short list of NCAA women's titlists in school history. Meyer won the 200-yard backstroke in 2011 in 1 minute, 50.76 seconds.
Nelson subsequently broke Meyer's school standard — it currently sits at 1:48.49 — and is in strong position to win that race, too, which would make Nelson the first two-time NCAA champion in a program that debuted 45 years ago.
Nelson, who also owns school standards in the 200 individual medley and 100 butterfly, has a simple view of her status heading into the NCAA championships.
"I am a contender," she said. "I was last year, too, but I think this year I have a little bit more confidence going into the meet."
Nelson finished second in the NCAAs in the 100 back and third in the 200 back as a sophomore in 2018. She was coming off a Big Ten Conference meet in which she won the 100 back and 200 back in league-record times and was named swimmer of the championships.
Nelson repeated as top swimmer of the Big Ten meet again last month after she turned in record-setting efforts in the 100 back and 200 back as well as the 200 IM.
Now she's looking to check out the view from the very top of the NCAA podium. To get there would mean the celebratory end to an arduous journey for Nelson, whose career at Wisconsin began amid unseen crisis.
Most everyone knew her as the homegrown dynamo at Verona Area High School — two hands were needed to count her individual state titles — who had her choice of national powerhouse programs before picking the school in her backyard.
Needless to say, expectations were off the charts.
What wasn't well-known about Nelson is that her mother, Loree, was diagnosed with breast cancer the summer before Nelson enrolled at Wisconsin and the disease eventually reached stage four.
What wasn't well-known is that Nelson embarked on her career with the Badgers after dropping nearly 30 pounds in an ill-conceived nutrition regimen leading up to the U.S. Olympic Trials in the summer of 2016.
What wasn't well-known is that, like so many of her teenage peers, Nelson struggled with the transition from the security of high school to the independence of college even though she was 20 minutes from home.
Expectations for Nelson were such that eyebrows were raised when she didn't win a Big Ten individual title during her first season and her best finish at the NCAA meet in 2017 was 17th in the 200 back.
"After my freshman year there was a lot of questioning," she said. "Am I where I'm supposed to be? Do I like this? Do I want to keep doing this if I'm never going to achieve these superficial goals that I put in my head? Am I worth anything in the sport? It was really confusing and super hard for me.
"After my freshman year, there were a lot of doubts, that all the things I ever thought I could achieve or would achieve, I never will."
Loree and Beata Nelson
Nelson was so taken aback by her mother's diagnosis that it took her a year before she felt comfortable talking about it. Loree said she discovered a telltale lump on her breast while accompanying her middle child to the U.S. Olympic Trials.
According to Beata, her mother has been on an experimental drug for the last two years and recent scans show that she's "pretty much stable." Loree is back working as a nurse at UW Hospital.
"The strongest person I've ever met in my life," Beata said of her mother. "You'd never know she was sick. It's incredible to watch that. It inspires me to be a better person every day and do it for her.
"She has such a huge impact on my life and who I am. She's my best friend. I have good friends. She's my best friend."
Loree was asked how she helped Beata navigate the realities of her illness.
"Just let her talk it out," Loree said.
"It was tough for Beata for a really long time," said senior teammate and good friend Emmy Sehmann, a freestyle specialist from Bowling Green, Ohio. "She doesn't really show it very often. She's got a pretty tough exterior.
"But going through things with her mom can be tough. I think that makes her work even harder because whenever her mom's at a swim meet, Beata swims for her."
Kathleen Coughlin, Beata Nelson, Kelsi Artim and Emmy Sehmann at the 2019 Big Ten Championships
A temporary casualty of that melancholy period was how Beata viewed her faith.
"I lost my relationship with God my freshman year," she said. "I didn't understand why somebody I loved so much could deserve that. I didn't get it. I abandoned my faith completely."
Slowly but surely, Nelson retraced her steps to the point that she's become active in the campus chapter of Athletes in Action, an international organization focused on equipping athletes, coaches and sports-minded individuals to grow in their faith.
"I can't really pinpoint a moment where I knew, 'OK, I need to find my relationship with God again,'" Nelson said.
It just evolved.
"I didn't know she was struggling with that in addition to everything else that was going on," Loree said. "But now, looking back on it, she's reconnected. She really enjoys this AIA group and found her way back with her faith."
Seeing her mom's health improve helped the process. So did coming to grips with the realization that faith is an intangible thing and Nelson had been looking for something tangible.
"It felt like everything was going wrong and I didn't understand why I didn't just see a sign from God," she said.
Nelson regained control of her nutrition and conditioning, but not before some scary moments. She said she began working with a nutritionist while in high school, embracing a strict diet to create lean muscle for the Olympic Trials, but the plan didn't properly account for her caloric needs.
Nelson said she rapidly lost weight while doing two pool workouts and a dryland session daily, but admits she became obsessed with the nutritionist's benchmarks and turned a blind eye to the physical results. She also dismissed concerned looks and inquiries from family and friends.
"I think I had a lot of body image issues that I never really addressed, so I saw this as getting in shape," she said.
Nelson dropped from the 160-pound vicinity to around 135. In one telling moment, she donned one of her skin-tight racing suits only to see it hang loosely off her body.
"It was a wakeup call for me," Nelson said, wondering aloud if she might have had undiagnosed eating disorder going on.
Nearly two years passed before Nelson got a handle on her fitness thanks to nutritionists at UW.
"I've finally, this year, gained normalcy about that facet of my life," she said.
Nelson looks back on her first collegiate season with the Badgers with a mature sense of appreciation.
"That period of time — as rough in my opinion as it was for me — it was essential to my journey and where I am now, which is really cool," she said. "A lot of people would look at it as failure of a year, but for me it was period of growth that I really needed."
Beata Nelson and teammate Hannah Lindsey share a laugh during a meet earlier this season.
Based on results alone, Nelson had a much better season as a sophomore. In addition to being named Swimmer of the Championships at the Big Ten meet, she earned first-team All-America honors in three events at the NCAA meet. The only other Wisconsin women's swimmer to manage that feat was Ellen Stonebraker in 1999.
But while Nelson was close to full strength physically, she struggled emotionally with what she called "negative energy" and the stress of expectations.
"Everyone was expecting me to win," she said.
Nelson began swimming when she was 6 and was 9 when it became her go-to focus. She set eight state records in high school and established the national mark in the 100 butterfly as a sophomore, junior and senior at Verona. She paused for a long moment before trying to explain the appeal of her sport.
"I love to swim," she said finally. "I don't know other than I love to do it."
That includes practices where you're staring at a black line at the bottom of the pool, churning out the same strokes, pushing yourself to get better for the ultimate payoff.
"Competing is one of the most exciting parts for me," Nelson said. "I love when the crowd gets so loud I can't hear myself think, then I dive in the pool and it's just me in my lane and the water."
Nelson wrestled with those motivating urges last season.
"Last year I didn't enjoy it; I didn't look forward to going to practice," she said. "I was almost afraid, or nervous about practice.
"I struggled a lot to find happiness, not just in general, but in the sport especially."
That's uncharacteristic of Nelson, a psychology major with an engaging, friendly and well-spoken presence, someone who last spring took the stage at The Buckinghams — a talent and award show for Wisconsin student-athletes — and sang "Dancing On My Own" by Calum Scott.
In addition to her time spent with AIA, Nelson also is active in the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and volunteers with Badgers Give Back, the community outreach program for Wisconsin Athletics.
"Having a platform like I do as a Division I student-athlete, being visible to the community and having an impact is hugely important to me," she said.
One of Nelson's favorite BGB assignments is American Family Children's Hospital.
"It's something that really warms my heart and helps my soul when I get to go there and see those kids on Fridays," she said.
Sehmann first encountered Nelson during the latter's recruiting visit and the two struck up a friendship.
"I definitely know why we wanted her," Sehmann said. "She's a really good example of someone to look at who works hard and strives for excellence all around."
Nelson — her given name is Elizabeth — is the middle child between sisters Samantha and Madeleine. Beata said she got her nickname from a TV show her parents, Loree and Andrew, watched when she was young.
Beata has grown into someone her mother admires.
"I sometimes sit back in awe of her the way she handles things, respects people and challenges herself," Loree said.
The pathway to contentment for Beata came after her sophomore season was done. Yuri Suguiyama, the men's associate head coach at California, took over the UW men's and women's programs, replacing Whitney Hite. The move gave Nelson instant pause.
"I'm not somebody who does well with change, so initially I was very hesitant, scared," she said.
Suguiyama coached on the men's side for six years prior to coming to Madison, but one of his signature feats was guiding Katie Ledecky, then 15, to the Olympic gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle in 2012.
One of the first orders of business for Suguiyama was to sit down privately with each new student-athlete. Nelson made an immediate impression.
"It was pretty evident to me and my staff early on that Beata took this very seriously," Suguiyama said.
"She possesses a lot of the intangibles that make athletes great whether it's their consistency day-to-day, their work ethic, their drive, their responsibility of taking care of their bodies.
"She does a lot of things right."
Nelson described this season as "hard" and "weird" because of all the new faces, voices and training ideas, but the atmosphere has changed for the better.
"It's been awesome," she said. "I can't speak more highly of the staff and what they've done to our program."
Nelson (top left) credits first-year coach Yuri Suguiyama (front center) and his staff with helping her rediscover happiness in the pool.
Nelson said she feels completely different about herself and her sport than she did a season ago, a transformation confirmed by her mother.
"She's just a happier person," Loree said.
"This is one of the happiest periods I've had in the sport of swimming," Beata said. "I have a really good relationship with all of my coaches. My teammates have been really awesome. And I've been swimming well. I can't ask for much more than that.
"I'm riding the momentum that's been going on this year. It's been awesome. Knowing that the swimming world is kind of seeing me having a legitimate space in the sport is super cool because I was labeled as a freshman failure. Last year was my time to prove that I wasn't that, and this year is kind of my chance to be me and freely swim and enjoy myself and not worry about the pressure of proving to people that I deserve to be where I am."
All the while, Nelson has her sights set on the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
"All this is in preparation for that," she said.
"She's right there," Suguiyama said of Nelson, "breathing the air that a lot of those (Olympic-caliber) girls do."
Beata Nelson waves to her family and fans after setting the American record (49.67) in the 100 backstroke at the Texas Invitational in November.
Nelson said she's motivated for the NCAA meet in part by the idea of joining Meyer and Drew teDuits, a Fitchburg product who won the 200 backstroke national title for the Wisconsin men's team in 2013, as an NCAA individual champion.
"To know that I could have my name listed among theirs is incredible," Nelson said.
There was a time when Nelson would be swimming at the UW Natatorium pool as a prep phenom and see Meyer's sub-1:50 time in the 200 back on the school record board.
"How is that even possible?" Nelson wondered to herself.
Now Nelson owns that mark — as well as the Big Ten standard — at 1:48.47. She said Meyer has reached out to offer congratulations and encouragement.
"She believes in me and it's cool," Nelson said.
Sehmann was asked what makes Nelson tick.
"Her drive for the sport," Sehmann said. "She's been so good for so long and she's been on this ladder for such a long time that she's ready to get to the top. She's exactly where she needs to be to get there."
Suguiyama was more direct about Nelson.
"Her best swimming's in front of her," he said.
