WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. – In February, Lycoming College senior Danielle Loiseau (Lancaster, Pa./Hempfield) came back from what should have been a career-ending surgery to make her way back into the pool just two weeks later and earn four All-Middle Atlantic Conference honors at the conference's women's swimming championships just one month after that. Her perseverance has helped her become the first Lycoming College student-athlete to earn the MAC's Giant Steps Award.
 
Loiseau will receive the award at the MAC's Annual Luncheon on Tuesday, May 5, at Hood College.
 
When Loiseau started her senior season, she seemed poised to make waves as one of the best swimmers in the Middle Atlantic Conference. As a junior, she spent the fall semester abroad in Germany and when she came back, she still managed to earn Second Team All-MAC honors in the 200-yard butterfly.

When she returned in August for her senior year, she told Lycoming's head swimming coach Jerry Hammaker that she wanted to swim distance events. The shift turned out to be a natural fit for her – she won two MAC Swimmer of the Week awards by the end of November.

In December, her season took a turn for the worse, and for many others, their careers may have been over. Just before Christmas, doctors told Danielle that a benign cyst needed to be removed and was estimated to be five-six pounds.

The resulting surgery looked like it would take the rest of the season and her career. Doctors estimated the recovery time would be 6-8 weeks from the early January surgery, leaving a thin window to be ready for the mid-February MAC Championships.

"She is one of the hardest working women that I have coached at Lycoming," Hammaker said, "and she is someone that everyone who was on her team and competed against her really liked. When we found out that she needed surgery, I think it devastated everyone on the team. To know she was trying to come back was quite inspiring for everyone, also."

When the new semester began in January, she was in the pool in the morning by the middle of the first week, barely two weeks from the surgery. Hammaker tried to ensure that Loiseau didn't comeback too quickly, but it wasn't long before she was back at afternoon practices.

By the end of the month, Hammaker decided to put her back in the pool in a dual meet with King's. She wasn't just out there to get back in the pool – she was there to qualify for the MAC Championships in traditionally her strongest event – the 200-yard butterfly.

"When I first found out, I was really upset," Loiseau said, "especially when I had to tell Coach Hammaker and the team. It was pretty sad, but once I got back to school and I started to feel a little better, it was really exciting to me to swim at practice. I still didn't think I would be able to swim at MACs, but once I got to a point where I could compete, then I thought I could compete, but wouldn't approach my top times. Everything just kept getting better."

She finished her collegiate career with a phenomenal and inspiring effort at the MAC Championships. She finished fourth in the 200-yard butterfly, an event she qualified for just three weeks removed from her surgery. Amazingly, she did it with a time that was just three-tenths of a second off the school record. She also earned all-conference honors in the 100-yard butterfly, helping her finish her career with six individual All-MAC honors and 13 All-MAC honors with relay teams. Loiseau also helped the 800-yard freestyle relay set the school record in 8:09.31.

"The first night was the 800-yard freestyle relay and I wasn't too pleased with my performance," Loiseau said. "The next night was the 500-yard freestyle and that is not my main event. When I got to the 100-fly and did one of my best times, I was really excited. I didn't think I was going to be able to do that."

Maybe most appropriately, Loiseau, who was named the 2015 Lycoming College Female Athlete of the Year, capped Lycoming's MAC Championships by posting an anchor split of 53.75 in the 400-yard freestyle relay, a split that would have set the school record in the 100-yard freestyle by nearly six-tenths of a second. Her swim helped the team finish sixth in the event and earn All-MAC honors, something made even more amazing by the fact that six weeks earlier, most people close to Loiseau thought her career was over.

"To watch her swim against some of the best sprinters in the conference and to see her pick up ground on some of them and then look at her time, that was one of those special moments," Hammaker said. "To see her face when she got out and saw her time, it was really neat. The whole team got really excited about it."