900 yards down, 100 to go. Sophomore swimmer Marie Mason was 100 yards from history in the 1000 freestyle.
Mason cruised through the water, taking it stroke by stroke. With her team and coaches’ encouragement, she made her last turn and was now 25 yards away. The crowd, coaches and teammates watched the scoreboard at the University of Idaho Swim Center. Mason took each stroke and put everything she had into the last 25 yards. She came to the wall, touched and waited for the results.
As the results came in, Mason knew she had put in a good time but wasn’t sure if she would beat the record. She looked up at the record board: 10:09.11. The next thing she knew, her teammates were congratulating her, and she was in the Idaho history books.
“I was shocked. It was a crazy experience,” Mason said. “I was so grateful for everybody, and everybody was hugging me. It was not quite something that I was expecting, at least at this point in the season. So, to have that moment early on was awesome.”
Mason’s journey began on her family’s farm in Molalla, Oregon, where she raised cows and horses and fell in love with agriculture and animals, along with swimming.
“I was immersed in agriculture. I showed cows, had a horse and just getting to do all those things was amazing,” Mason said. “It’s something I really learned as I got older that not a lot of people get to do, and I thought [it] was really amazing. As I got older, I realized it’s something I really want to do for the rest of my life and get to work with animals. And then when I was in high school, I was in National FFA Organization, and I got to compete and talk about agriculture and the issues in agriculture, the areas that are lacking and need some help.”
Mason started to get into sports until a T-ball incident where she got hit in the face with a baseball. From then on, she began swimming and never looked back.
“I joined it because I didn’t like any other sports,” Mason said. “I got hit in the face with a baseball playing T-ball, and I was like, ‘Never again, choose something else.’ So, my parents signed me up for swimming because they figured with water, I can’t get hit in the face. That’s when I started.”
From the age of nine all the way up until she graduated high school, Mason swam for a club team named the Oregon City Swim Team. Starting out, she was just doing it for fun, but as she got older, she realized that swimming could be the sport for her.
After her four-year career at Molalla High School, where she was a four-year letter winner in the 200 individual medley and 500 freestyle, she was looking to continue her swimming in college while also following her love of agriculture and animals.
“I was really looking for a school that had a great swim team, and I really was looking for a very supportive team atmosphere,” Mason said. “I wanted a school that had a good agricultural school and a good veterinary medicine program, something I’m very passionate about. When I was looking, I saw Idaho, and I came on a trip here. Getting to be around the team for the weekend and seeing all of our farms and the research that we do here was really cool.”
After taking a visit in the fall of 2023 during her senior year of high school, Mason knew Idaho was the place for her to fulfill her passions both in the pool and out.
“I came here on my recruiting trip that fall, and I was a little nervous at first,” Mason said. “But getting to come in the first thing we did was watch a practice, and seeing everybody laugh together and have so much fun. The team camaraderie, I loved and then as the weekend went on, I got to take a visit to the different farms here, and I thought that was an amazing experience. Those two moments combined sealed the fact that I really wanted to come here.”
Mason, now in her second year in Moscow, is enjoying every second of being a part of her team and being able to be a Division I swimmer.
“I’m really enjoying the team. Mark is such a great coach and so supportive, and getting to be around all of these amazing people, I really love,” Mason said. “I’m also loving the school outside of swimming, and we have a lot of hands-on learning here. Getting to do labs and learn things about animals and then employ them with animals, I think is really cool.”
Behind her hard work and go-to meet snack, fruit snacks, Mason has had a great start to the 2025 season.
“I am the biggest eater of fruit snacks during a meet you’ll ever meet,” Mason said. “I think I probably go through somewhere between five and 10 packages of fruit snacks in a meet. So I am always eating fruit snacks.”
“Marie Mason had a tremendous weekend. She’s a young sophomore,” head coach Mark Sowa said. “We always joke, you can’t coach experience, you just need to have experience. That’s why the sophomore year can be such a good thing, and we’re seeing that pay off with Marie.”
Mason has seen her confidence grow both in and out of the pool the most over these past two years in Moscow.
“My confidence has grown a lot in myself, my confidence in myself and what I can do,” Mason said. “When I came here, I learned early on how supported everybody is, and then growing from there.”
The nine-year-old farm girl who just wanted to play a sport without getting hit in the face and dreamed of a career in veterinary medicine has accomplished her goals. While her name is now in the record books, every time Mason hits the water, whether at a Saturday practice laughing with her teammates or breaking school records, she is living out her dream, one stroke at a time.
Jayden Barfuss can be reached at [email protected].