Lemont’s Schwem finds happy landing, commits to William & Mary
From William & Mary to Memphis and back to William & Mary again, star setter finally commits
Can a college recruit have two happy landings? Or three? With no hard feelings? Believe it or not, I have one for you.
Lemont graduate Amy Schwem has had one of the craziest journeys into college life that I have ever seen.
Most of it occurred during a head-spinning span of eight weeks.
She described it better than I could. “Absolute chaos,” Schwem said. “Emotionally and mentally, I was just all over the place.”
Next fall, Schwem will begin her freshman year at William & Mary as a member of the women’s volleyball team.
The 5-foot-10 setter graduated from Lemont in 2020. She is currently in a gap year, working at the high school as a nurse’s assistant.
The in-betweens are pretty amazing. But let’s go back to the beginning.
Schwem was an all-area player at Lemont. In my eyes, she was one of the best the program has ever had.
She was rewarded with a scholarship offer from William & Mary. She accepted at the start of her senior season. She said it was her “dream” school.
Happy landing No. 1 lasted until this past fall. Schwem had already started her gap year, but she was stunned in early September when William & Mary announced due to financial concerns it was dropping women’s volleyball.
If there were a high road to take,
Schwem went to the road even above that one. She blamed no one, said she held no anger at all toward the school, and was going to keep a positive attitude as she considered her options.
Her best wound up being Memphis. On Oct. 3, she made happy landing No. 2.
“I was very excited about the opportunity,” Schwem said. “I had a great connection with the staff there. It was easy to move forward with them.”
But then came Oct. 19. On that day, Schwem learned that William & Mary, facing a lawsuit regarding Title IX inequity, had reinstated the women’s volleyball, gymnastics and swimming programs.
Talk about a “you’ve got to be kidding me” moment …
“I started getting text messages from people all over,” Schwem said. “They were asking, ‘What are you going to do?’ And I had no idea.”
Schwem pondered the realities with some of the other recruits. I have to commend her having an incredibly mature thought process.
“We did have a few like me who committed elsewhere,” Schwem said. “We had a couple still in the transfer portal and a couple who weren’t sure what they were going to do yet.
“We thought about, ‘Were we going to be competitive? Were we going to have to build from the ground up? Were the coaches returning?’ The consensus was that nobody was really ready to leave if it was all back on the table.”
After checking all of the boxes, Schwem made the decision to decommit from Memphis and return to a welcoming William & Mary.
The first thing she had to do was explain her decision to Memphis coach Sean Burdette.
“Decommitting from Memphis was one of the hardest calls I had to make,” Schwem said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better response. He was very understanding, very respectful.
“He was so patient while I was trying to make the decision. He never pushed me for an answer. It was really an impossible call to make because of what a good person he is. But it was something that I felt needed to be done.”
And, so, Schwem is back at William & Mary. She said she feels comfortable with the entire situation and is ready to move forward.
“It’s exciting,” Schwem said. “It was definitely a big challenge and a struggle, but luckily I had a lot of good people around me supporting me. Looking back on it, it was such a learning experience and an opportunity for growth.
“I remember talking to my recruiting coordinator at Michio. After I was reinstated, they were like, ‘OK, every recruiting meeting we have moving forward, you are going to be on it. If you can survive this, the kids that are about to enter the recruiting world can survive anything.’”
Hopefully, happy landing No. 3 will be a permanent one.