Sonya Pyle can finally celebrate.

On Monday, the 25-year-old Bradford native recorded the fastest swim by a woman across a 23.8-mile stretch of Lake Erie.

Pyle, a 2000 Bradford Central Christian High School graduate, swam from Long Point, Ontario, Canada, to Freeport Beach, North East in 14 hours and 9 minutes. The previous record was 15 hours and 2 minutes.

“I feel very proud. I cannot put into words how much people did for me,” said Pyle. “This is a classic example of a team coming together and getting the job done.”

Those who accompanied her in the water included Bradley Whitman, fiancé; Stacy Knapp and Tara Skasic, friends; Mark Farrell, uncle and captain of the boat, Father Goose; and Laura McIntosh, a sports medical physician.

For Pyle and company, it took overcoming one false start and obstacles in the form of seven-foot waves and 125-plus-foot freighters to reach their final destination.

“We left Erie on my uncle’s boat at about 4:30 a.m. Saturday. We knew that it was choppy, but we were all hoping it would lay down,” Pyle explained.

“Initially, the waves were four to six feet, then it calmed down. When they picked up again they reached six to eight feet and I saw Brad and Jamie Heynes [consultant] give each other a look that I knew meant it was not the day to go,” she bemoaned.

“I was really upset because I was so excited and prepared and people were sacrificing their time, money and energy for me. It felt like a huge let-down.”

In actuality, Pyle may have had the winds of fate on her side, because a gentleman who did try to swim the lake that day did not meet his goal.

“I went home and got my head about myself and started looking at the calendar and the weather,” stated Pyle.

“Brad advised me not to try to go Sunday because he felt I was not mentally ready for it, and he was absolutely right,” she explained.

“We got to the marina Monday morning and it was pouring. I thought, ‘What is going on now?’,” she said.

“Obviously I didn’t care that it was raining because I was going to be wet anyway, but I didn’t want the people in kayaks to suffer. They all gave the thumbs up, so we headed off on my Uncle Mark’s boat toward Long Point,” she said.

The peninsula rarely gets visitors, as its makeup is that of a jetty, not an inviting surface for those wishing to take a dip in the Lake.

“When we got to Long Point, I got out of the boat and swam to shore and stood for a little while by myself. I gave myself a pep talk and focused on the task ahead of me,” Pyle said.

After the first two kayakers had their GPS equipment set up, it was time to hit the water and begin toiling away at the near 24 miles that lay between the Pyle and her crew, and Freeport Beach.

“We used three-quarters of a huge jar of Vaseline and that kept me warm all day,” said Pyle.

“It (the petroleum jelly wasn’t really necessary for the first two to three hours because the water temperature was good and the sun was coming up. I think I swam about ten miles in the first four hours,” she marveled.

Then, unforeseen difficulties began to arise. As stated in a previous article, Pyle had seen several specialists throughout her training, including a sports psychologist, nutritionist and chiropractor.

All of these sessions may have helped prepare the swimmer, but when the time came for Pyle to face the obstacles that fellow man and nature threw at her, she could not deny that her moods at times matched the darkness of the lake.

“After my third break, I stopped and Brad pointed at huge freighter, which he thought was about 125 feet (long). I had no idea that we had come very near the boat. That is when we started to go off course,” explained Pyle.

“Also, the waves always pick up at midday and once that happened, they never laid back down. There were two other freighters that went by us, and at one point there were seven-foot waves,” she said.

“At that point,” she admitted, “I started to get extremely frustrated. I swam over on one of my breaks and Brad assured me that the worst was over.”

“What was I going to do? I couldn’t get out at that point. My shoulders were already shot and there was no way I would have been able to attempt it again this summer,” explained Pyle.

After all of the facts were gathered, it seemed that her crew decided that what Pyle did not know could not hurt her, at least mentally.

“We ended up way off course. I didn’t know how far off course we were until I was sitting in the emergency room after the swim and Brad told me that the GPS had clocked 28.6 miles,” Pyle stated.

If the GPS were accurate, had Pyle stayed on course, she may have been close to breaking the overall record for the swim.

“When I first heard my mileage, I thought, ‘Wow. I was swimming really fast.’ My next thought was, ‘If someone breaks my record by swimming a straight line, I’m probably going to have to get in the water again to challenge it,’” she said.

Satisfaction may be a fleeting concept for Pyle, who explained one other small obstacle that the lake had to offer.

“I got hit by a dead fish,” she said, obviously still a little disgusted by the unwelcome run-in. “Right when it got dark, something touched me. I told myself that it was just Tara’s kayak or driftwood, but I found out later what it really was.”

There were others waiting for Pyle to swim to them; nearly 300 people waited on shore at Freeport Beach to show their support and encourage her.

“When we got closer to shore, I fixed my goggles and turned my music off,” she stated.

“I could hear people chanting, ‘Swim, Sonya, Swim’ so that pumped me up, and I really got moving again. I could hear fire engines and boats blowing their horns. I could not believe how many people were there.”

Waiting on shore were her mother, Peggy Pyle, and her grandmother, Jean Farrell.

“My grandma is 86 -- I did not expect her to be there,” Pyle exclaimed. “But those are the faces -- my family, friends, Brad -- that I kept picturing when I would get down. People never doubted me and that kept me going too.”

As for now, Pyle will let her body rest and will also lay to rest the idea that she could have reached the shore much sooner (or gone farther).

“I just got done with a massage. Although it was nice, it was the most painful massage I’ve ever had,” she said Wednesday. “And now I am going to enjoy my first beer in four months and celebrate.”

Satisfied? Don’t count on it.

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