Swimmer sets record in crossing Lake Erie

It took the Pa. woman a little more than 14 hours to cover the distance.

NORTH EAST, Pa. (AP) — Sonya Pyle walked exhausted but triumphant from the waters of Lake Erie at Freeport Beach in North East, hugging her fiancé.

Pyle, of Erie, a marketing coordinator for Saint Vincent Health Center, had just set the women’s record for swimming from Long Point, Ontario, to Freeport Beach.

She had covered the 23.8-mile distance in 14 hours and nine minutes Aug. 6. The previous record of 15 hours and two minutes was set by Sara McClure in 2005.

“It’s an amazing feeling,” she said, surrounded by television cameras and a crowd of a couple hundred people who included family members, friends and onlookers. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

The group had chanted loudly as she came closer to shore and erupted in cheers as she arrived at the beach. Among those in the crowd were her mother, Peggy Pyle, of Bradford, and Sonya Pyle’s 86-year-old grandmother, Jean Farrell.

The 25-year-old began her swim at 8:10 a.m. in good weather conditions with calm winds, no rain and a beautiful sunrise, according to her handlers.

Accompanying her in kayaks and a boat, Father Goose, were her fiancé, Brad Whitman; Stacy Knapp, a co-worker; Tara Skasic, her best friend; her uncle, Mark Farrell, owner of Father Goose; and Laura McIntosh, a sports medicine physician at Saint Vincent.

Pyle said she ran into rough conditions and also had shoulder pain and got cold at times.

“It was a little more rough than I wanted,” she said, adding that she had thoughts of giving up “more than once.”

“I got a little mentally upset,” she said. Whitman “was there and didn’t let me quit along with everybody else [on the team]. I had a lot of people who cared about me and a lot of people who wanted me to succeed because this isn’t something you do on your own. I’m just very glad it’s over.”

At 3:30 p.m., she was about 10 miles off Freeport Beach, and had not slowed down at all, keeping the same pace of 2.2 mph to 2.5 mph, according to McIntosh, who was aboard the Father Goose.

Disrupted by freighters

The swim was disrupted by three freighters, creating waves of up to 8 feet and rough conditions. One freighter caused the entire team to stop while it passed within 20 yards, McIntosh said.

At 5:45 p.m., she was 6.6 miles offshore and had slowed down a bit because of waves kicking up.

When she was a couple miles offshore, the crowd could see the light from her boat in the distance and anxiously awaited her arrival and began periodic chants: “Swim, Sonya, swim.”

Pyle, a Bradford native and former Gannon University swimming star, had decided to swim the lake a year ago when a friend, Josh Heynes, set the men’s record in 11 hours and 53 minutes. She began training in November. Heynes, who served as a consultant, was present Monday evening.

Pyle had been among three swimmers who were attempting to cross Lake Erie a few days earlier, but weather conditions prevented her guide boat from crossing the lake to Long Point, where she was to start her crossing.

Of the other two swimmers, Dan Nichols, 37, of Woodstock, Ontario, completed the swim from Presque Isle State Park to Long Point, Ont., at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, after swimming 32.3 miles in 20 hours and 45 minutes.

Erie police officer Jeff Dahlstrand of Millcreek left Long Point the same day and came within a few miles of the Pennsylvania shore when weather conditions turned rough and he was pulled from the water.