WJ junior Maren Conze performs as one of the best swimmers in the country. On October 5, she announced her verbal commitment to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Committing to a division one sports program at any age is a huge feat, but the fact that she was recruited as a junior shows the extent of her athletic abilities.
The recruitment process for Conze started in June of 2020. She was approached by a number of schools including Northwestern, Duke and UNC.
In the end, she chose to go to UNC because she found the school to be very appealing to her. She will be majoring in psychology, specifically sports psychology, at the university.
“I went there and all the coaches were amazing, I literally loved them so much and the campus was beautiful. I looked at the psych program and it was extremely impressive and then the team was very welcoming of me,” Conze said.
Conze has been swimming competitively since elementary school and she currently competes with the Nation’s Capital Swim Club. She is nationally ranked and will be a part of the Olympic trials. Swimming makes her life very busy but she regards her experience as a swimmer in high terms.
“Swimming is so insanely hard that it’s a love-hate relationship. I love it so much. I love the adrenaline, I love the feeling you get after you succeed after a race, or when you get a gold medal or when you drop in an event,” Conze said.
Maren hopes to be in the Olympic Trials in 2024 and is ecstatic to compete at the Division 1 level on UNC’s swim team.
![Social studies teacher Timothy Rodman holds a production factory simulation in his AP Microeconomics class. "Students remember running for class president or the mock congress or the production factory much more so than learning topics like circular flow," Rodman said. "[The simulations make learning] very tangible and real and then students down the road are able to use it."](https://www.wjpitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/IMG_4420-1200x675.jpg)
