Nashua's Emily Sweet has wrapped up a storied career for Bentley University while battling cancer. (Photo courtesy of Sportspix/Bentley University)

NASHUA – This was supposed to be a huge weekend for Nashua High School North alum Emily Sweet.

It’s the weekend of the Northeast Conference Swimming championships, and was to be the 22-year-old Sweet’s final swimming appearance for the Bentley Falcons, as she wraps up a successful collegiate career.

Instead, it’s just a big weekend. Sweet will be unable to compete because she is having a stem-cell procedure next month in her year-long battle against a form of lymphoma. Doctors have advised her, especially with COVID being a threat, not to compete or be at the event so close to the procedure, so she will be watching from afar, likely on line.

“I’m so excited to watch my teammates and see all the work they put in, especially since there was no conference et last year,” Sweet said. “At the end of December, I kind of realized it wasn’t going to happen (for her), which was kind of disappointing …going into this season I was expecting to go through everything.”

“She’s had a very positive personality pre- (cancer) and through this,” Bentley coach Mary Kay Samko said. “When she was first diagnosed, she said, ‘I’m so sorry to let you down.’ And I was like, ‘Let me down?’

“But she had Senior Night, which was great. It was huge for the team, even more than for her.”

Indeed, Sweet hasn’t been on campus much due to her illness and the concerns related to COVID, but did get to compete in a senior meet as her final appearance a few weeks ago. Her times were slow as her body is still recovering from the cancer treatment, which included chemotherapy, but no one cared, including Sweet. It was just great to be around her teammates and back in the pool.

“It was really amazing,” Sweet said. “It really hit me when I was getting my things out of the locker and leaving the pool area. When I was swimming in warmup, looking at the view you see when you’re turning your head to breathe – the diving board, the other side of the stands. It was just comforting because I had been there so long. I was the last one to take my suit off. I didn’t want to leave.”

Sweet says her feelings this weekend will be “mostly proud, even though I can’t be there this weekend, being at the end of their lanes cheering for them.”

Sweet actually has already had COVID twice, the first time this past fall which was the first week of moving in back to school. But her symptoms were fairly mild; four days later she was fine.

The second time, three months later, she was asymptomatic. Bullet dodged.

Clearly, it’s been a bumpy ride. What’s gotten her through it?

“Just being as positive as I can,” Sweet said. “I really feel a lot of times with almost anything you get out (of it) what you put into it. I think if you’re trying to have a positive mindset, you’re going to have a better day if you didn’t.

“The hardest thing is letting go of the visions I’ve had for myself. This is the last semester of my senior year in college, and we’ve already missed so much because of COVID. Instead of dwelling on that, I was still able to swim last fall with my teammates. I was able to be with them at the end of their lanes, and be at practice. That has gotten me through a lot.”

•••

HER SWIMMING CAREER

Sweet has been swimming since she was 6 years old, but began getting serious and competing in competitive events when she was 11, competing for the Greater Nashua YMCA Storm.

“What I really liked about it was just being in the water, but what I really liked about it was being timed,” said Sweet, explaining that she was also a dancer as a youth and would get frustrated with the judging.

“You’d get points off if your tights were ripped,” she said, chuckling. “I said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ So she liked the points-scoring aspect of swimming, based on actual times to show performance, not subjective opinion.

“I could see, ‘Wow, I got five seconds better,'” she said. “That’s what I really liked about it.”

Sweet didn’t swim for Nashua North, swimming with the Storm instead, but she played field hockey and ran track for the Titans. Her swimming specialties at Bentley have been the distance events (500 and 1,000 yard) as well as the backstroke events.

How’d she end up at Bentley? She sent out emails to college coaches, knew she wanted to study business, and Samko certainly was on her address list. And she enjoyed the campus, the curriculum, and liked the training room facilities.

“I remember when I met Coach MK, she was speaking about the kids on the team and how she cared about them,” Sweet said. “It was so obvious. Not just about their swimming. It was just a good combination of everything.”

And, as Samko said, “We clicked right away.”

Sweet has always liked the challenge of the stroke and long distance practices, because they’d be among the last to finish practice. She actually liked practice. “I know most people don’t,” she said with a chuckle. ‘My coach and my teammates kind of think I’m crazy for it.”

Samko, after she originally heard from Sweet, started following her Storm results, and saw she had success in the 200 backstroke and 200 butterfly, and those were events Bentley needed help in. But the fact Sweet excelled in distance events once she got to Bentley “was a nice surprise.” In fact, she’s among the school’s all-time best in terms of her distance event times – as well as the back and fly events. It’s been a storied career.

Her favorite moment with the Storm was an invitational meet at the University of Maryland that the locals competed in for about four years. It was Sweet’s introduction to big time swimming.

“I think (Olympian) Michael Phelps has some of the pool records there,” she said. “The first year I went I was overwhelmed by the speed of the people there. … You had to make certain times just to swim there. I remember being blown away, I had never seen swimming so fast.”

But by her senior year in high school, her last trip there she was able to compete in the ‘A’ final, in the top eight in the 200 butterfly.

“I remember how scared I had been when I was young and intimidated,” Sweet said. “But being able to compete in the A final was really exciting.”

Sweet enjoyed her athletic career at North, but she didn’t want to give up swimming with all her Storm friends that she had been with since she started at 11. But she realized a bit of what she missed by not competing for the Titans.

“Swimming for Bentley I really recognized how much fun it is swimming for your school, and having pride in that,” she said. “I obviously had pride in my ‘Y’ team, but we never had dual meets or anything like that. I always had fun representing North (in other sports).”

But competing in college was an eye-opener. Sweet remembers her first dual meet with the Falcons, but even more so her first practices, which included running up a huge staircase for conditioning.

“Me and the other freshmen were like, ‘What have we gotten ourselves into?’,” she said, adding that it was also an adjustment mixing the athletics and academics that made for an incredibly busy schedule.

She also realized that you had to pace yourself during a season. Best times should be saved for the biggest meets, and Sweet was the type when competing for the Storm she’d be upset with an average time even when it was a run of the mill meet. She also learned about the specialization of the sport.

“Just watching all of my (Bentley) teammates swim, I’d learn so much about their different strategies, mindset and things like that.

•••

THE DIAGNOSIS

Sweet was diagnosed with cancer late last January, but she remembers way before then she was swimming and felt “a weird pain” in her shoulder.

But she had been swimming for so long that she knew the signs of shoulder overuse and this wasn’t one. While in the shower afterward, she felt a lump just above her clavicle, feeling her lymph nodes were swollen. Later she developed flu-like symptoms, but her COVID tests were all negative.

The next step was a biopsy and the cancer was discovered.

“I think even worse that when they told me it was lymphoma, was the day when they told me it might be, because I was thinking they were going to tell me I had pneumonia or bronchitis or something,” Sweet said. “And they said ‘You might have Hodgkins lymphoma.’ ”

Sweet, as Samko alluded, didn’t really think of how it would impact her life, but what it would mean to others. When her mother called shortly after, she told her on the phone.

“I waited as long as I could,” she said.

Her treatment regimen lasted until August, and they just finished further treatment. Doctors have told her after the stem cell transplant they’re very optimistic she’d be cancer free.

Sweet was optimistic she might still be able to compete despite knowing she wouldn’t swim her best times due to the exhaustive effect of the treatment. Remember, there was no season a year ago due to COVID. But she couldn’t compete regularly.

“This wasn’t something I expected,” she said. “Doing everything to be healthy, being young, having an active lifestyle, it’s not something necessarily you’d expect. I was walking and thinking I had pneumonia. I think that was really surprising, you don’t expect it.”

The treatment, “while it was going on,” was exhausting. Fifteen minute walks would tire her out. And when she felt herself getting weaker, it made her mad.

“All those early morning lifts I went to,” she thought, were something that was supposed to make her stronger.

But today Sweet feels much better. The latter part of treatment did not impact her as much and she was able to practice with her teammates. She’s been off-campus since the end of the first semester and has been taking classes remotely.

That’s helped, because it keeps her mind occupied after he last appearance with her team. Even during treatment in the fall, she practiced.

“She just came in every day and did the work she had to do,” Samko said. “Got in her lane, and didn’t miss a beat.”

Sweet’s college career is ending not because of her illness. She’s already involved in a joint Masters degree program and plans to begin working.

But she’d love to swim in Masters competitions. In fact, some of those swimmers practiced in the morning at Bentley before her team did.

“I’d have to wrap my head around jumping in a cold pool that early in the morning again,” she said. “But it’ll be too hard for me to stay away from something I’ve loved for so long.”

•••

HER SHINING MOMENT

In her sophomore year, she made the A final in the conference meet her sophomore year in the 1,000. But her favorite moment by far was a simple invitational meet this past December. She had gone through her health issues, and she recalls that first swim.

“My times obviously weren’t as fast, but that first swim, the 500, I remember feeling so powerful,” Sweet said. “Something I had never felt before in swimming. It was like an out of body experience. That was like one of the most amazing things. I was able to recognize about how far I’ve come.

That was my favorite moment.”

Samko has been putting her relay groups together for this weekend’s big meet, and it was tough to put Sweet’s name down then cross it off.

“Every time I’m putting a relay together I go, ‘Ohhh no!’,” Samko said. “So yes, we miss her. … She’s an amazing young lady. We’re proud to have had her here and she’s made a huge difference.”

That final meet in December was certainly emotional, Samko said, in a good way. “Because,” as the coach said, “with her it’s about the happy piece, and not about the sad piece.”

When Sweet returns to full health, you know full well she will be around a pool and dive in head first.