Kropp comes 'full circle'

AK: I would say what's most common between the two sports is that you can't give up in practice and you have your teammates there to push you all the time. What's different is I think cross-country is more of a team sport, especially compared to club swimming because in club swimming you just go out and swim your own race. In high school swimming, it's a little more team-oriented, but still you don't get the same team aspect as you do in cross-country. But, possibly, that might be because I didn't practice with the high school team for swimming and I did for cross-country, so maybe I'm seeing it differently just because of how I practiced.

GR: You've been involved in swimming a lot longer, or a lot earlier in your life, than running. Were you able to apply any of the things you had learned from competitive swimming to running?

AK: I would say probably the ability to focus on your race even though sometimes someone may be out faster than you. If you just stick to your race plan in both swimming and running, it will be what takes you further.

GR: Swimming is your more dominant sport, but how do you feel getting involved in running made you a more well-rounded high school athlete?

AK: I think I learned a lot about leadership from cross-country that I was able to apply to my swimming.

My freshman year of swimming I came in and I was the fastest on the team, but I was still the baby on the team, so even though I was the fastest no one really looked up to me as a leader because I was the youngest there, not just grade-wise, but I was a whole year younger than the rest of the people in my grade.

But being able to be a leader on the cross-country team really helped me senior year to step up and guide the younger people on the swim team.

GR: You had an injury — a pulled tendon — during the cross-country season. Did that force you to consider how committed you were to cross-country as far as continuing to compete with an injury, as opposed to just taking up the sport for fun, and how concerned were you about that injury possibly affecting your swimming?