From brain surgery to All-American athlete to coach
Healthy 17-year-old student athletes don’t pass out on the football field during practice.
Athletes who miss their senior swim season don’t go on to become elite college swimmers.
Swimmers who get brain surgery don’t go on to be dubbed “the most decorated athlete” in their school’s history.
Unless you’re Anne Sarkissian DeRue.
It was the first day of preseason swim practice. DeRue and her teammates had just finished running laps around the track as part of their dry land workout.
“We had laid down in the football field to do sit ups,” DeRue recalled. “The last thing I remember was my coach saying ‘When I say up, you say one.’ And then I remember waking up in an ambulance and not knowing why I was there. I was scared.”
DeRue didn’t know what was going on until her mom got to the hospital and told her she had a seizure on the football field and the doctors didn’t know why. She underwent a week and a half of tests until doctors found the reason for her seizure.
DeRue had a brain tumor. She had to have surgery to remove it.
“I cried a lot,” DeRue said.
DeRue asked her doctor if the surgery could wait until after swim season.
“He kind of chuckled,” DeRue said of the doctor’s reaction.
She had brain surgery the day after her senior year of school started.
The surgery was successful and DeRue was healing well. Five weeks after surgery, she went back to school. Her doctors cleared her to get back in the pool in October, but she was not allowed to swim butterfly, her best stroke.
“I was so out of shape, I didn’t feel like I would ever get back in shape,” DeRue said. “I don’t even know if I was back to where I was when I started college.”
DeRue became a Laker in 2000. She was already familiar with the swim team because head coach Kami Gardner was also her club team coach.
“What really made me choose Oswego was my coach,” DeRue said, tears welling up in her eyes. “She didn’t give up on me even when I wanted to give up on myself.”
Former teammate Leigh Mason — who introduced DeRue to her husband at a wedding — remembers meeting DeRue when she was still in high school.
“We knew she loved swimming and we knew she would be a good addition to the team,” Mason said. “We knew she would work hard.”
DeRue credits the specialized training in college to her time improvements, especially weight training, which she never did in high school.
“Anne was one of the hardest working swimmers I have ever known,” former teammate Beth Kujawski said. “She loved tough sets, the harder the better. Her work ethic, combined with her natural talent, made her a beast in the pool.”
By the end of her senior season, DeRue was a 12-time All-American swimmer, a three-time NCAA-qualifier and a four-time SUNYAC conference champion in the 100 and 200 butterfly. During her junior season, DeRue finished second in the 100 butterfly at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship meet.
“She was pretty inspiring to watch,” Mason said.
DeRue still holds the Oswego State records in the 100 and 200 butterfly. DeRue owns the oldest SUNYAC conference women’s swimming record in the 100 butterfly, set in 2003 with a time of 56.73 seconds.
In 2002 and 2004, DeRue was the recipient of the SUNYAC Outstanding Female Swimmer award.
“If you had asked me when I started college if I would come in second place at Nationals or be at the top of the conference for four straight years, I would have been like, ‘No. I’m not where I used to be,’” DeRue said. “When I was a junior in high school, I would look at the [Oswego State] record board when I was at practice and be like ‘Maybe I can do that.’”
After graduating from Oswego State and getting a job as a math teacher in Fulton, DeRue stayed involved with the swim team as an assistant coach and then as a volunteer assistant coach after she had her daughter, Hannah, in 2015.
She was inducted into the Oswego State Athletic Hall of Fame in 2013.
“I don’t think I could have done it without the support I did have,” DeRue said of her college swimming career. “I had an awesome coach, I had the best teammates ever. And of course my family. I had a whole support system of people who believed in me and because they did, I think it helped me believe that I could achieve the stuff I wanted to.”
