It was the last event of the day on the afternoon of Oct. 30. Inside the LSU Natatorium, the Lady Tigers’ swimming and diving team celebrate as junior captain Kannon Betzen, anchor of the 400-yard freestyle relay, coast to a finish seven seconds ahead of Tulane.
The Lady Tigers won the meet, 175-117, thanks in part to Betzen’s three first-place finishes in events she normally does not swim.
It seemed so effortless, but it wasn’t always this way.Betzen said she was on the verge of giving up swimming a year ago. She was performing well in practice, but the results weren’t translating to the meets.”I had a really rough season last year,” Betzen said. “I was really sick in the fall. I told myself if I don’t do well at [the Southeastern Conference championship meet], I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”Diedra Betzen, Kannon’s mother, said doctors could not figure out what was wrong with Kannon for a long time, and it hurt her performance.Kannon said she got well in the spring and swam career bests at the SEC meet in the 100- and 200- yard breaststroke, convincing her to stay with swimming.”She’s had some adversities,” said LSU coach Adam Schmitt. “She’s had different hurdles to go through, but she always comes around and seems to come together by the end of the year.”Kannon Betzen was always playing sports growing up, Soccer, softball, basketball, track and cheerleading — she did it all.But Kannon’s second home was the cool water of the pool and its familiar smell of chlorine. She became a competitive swimmer at the age of 6. Swimsuits and swim caps were almost as normal to her as walking.Diedra Betzen said it all started when 4-year-old Kannon got sick. The doctors told her it might be juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which would limit her activities.”If she did have it, swimming was one of the only exercises she could do,” Diedra Betzen said.Kannon Betzen turned out to be fine, but she stuck with swimming. She became a state champion for the 10 and under group for her club team.Betzen broke more than 50 school records in eight different events at Hobbs High School in Hobbs, N.M.Betzen said it was always her goal to swim in college, but she didn’t end up quite where she expected.Hobbs didn’t have other swim teams to compete against. The Betzens often traveled to Texas for swim meets.In the summers, Betzen usually swam with the Dallas Mustangs, a club team for USA Swimming, and went to swim camps at the University of Texas.Diedra Betzen said her daughter always thought she wanted to go to Texas until she got into high school.LSU came into the picture by coincidence. Betzen’s father, Ray, an insurance agent, had a client who was the father of one of LSU’s coaches.Kannon Betzen wasn’t too keen on the idea about going to LSU at first.”I refused,” she said. “I didn’t want to go here because [Hurricane] Katrina had just happened.”Betzen said an e-mail from assistant LSU coach David Geyer, who had just moved to Baton Rouge himself, changed her mind.Betzen said her family tries to watch her swim when it can, despite being spread across the country.”One of my sisters is … my biggest fan,” Kannon Betzen said. “She taught at [Texas] Tech, and she’d tell the whole class about me. She’s always been really supportive.”—-Contact Katherine Terrell at [email protected]