Editor’s note: Longtime Baton Rouge sportswriter, author and television host Lee Feinswog takes his unique approach to sports to dig deeper into LSU Athletics. Look for these features online and in official athletics department publications throughout the 2014-15 season.
The little girl was 11 and knew exactly what she would be for Halloween.
Caley Oquist dressed as an LSU football player, helmet, pads and all, ready to trick or treat in her home of Monticello, Minn. It was a way to honor her sick mom, the former Heidi Raasch, who had been an LSU swimmer.
“I was going to go to the hospital and surprise her,” Caley said, wearing an LSU football jersey that was her mom’s.
But Heidi never got to see her daughter that day. She died that morning, losing a battle with cancer that turned young Caley’s life upside down.
Fast forward a decade later and Caley Oquist is now a record-setting LSU swimmer herself, holding the school’s fastest times in the 100 and 200 backstrokes and 200 individual medley and primed to go even faster in this her junior season.
“The day my mom died I knew I was going to come to school here. That was my mission,” she said.
Not that she was Southeastern Conference quality. Sure, she set records and won state championships in Minnesota, but her times were OK and she didn’t even train year-round.
“She’s pretty amazing,” LSU assistant coach Jeana Fuccillo Kempe said. “I had no idea how talented she was until she got here. There were glimpses of it but until she started training like she has and developed a passion for it, we hadn’t seen it.”
LSU head coach Dave Geyer said Oquist’s dad, Mike, sent him a video of Caley swimming as a junior in high school.
“I looked at her times and thought she was all right. I watched the video and between the flags she was amazing, but the details of things were so off that I knew once we got her in and worked on that stuff there was a great deal of potential,” Geyer said.
“She was just a diamond in the rough. She never trained year-round.”
Oquist , who turns 21 in March, said she lost some of her swimming desire when her mother died.
“She was the one who got me into swimming. When she died I just wasn’t motivated,” Oquist admitted, which is why she wasn’t prepared, like most top-level swimmers, to train and compete 12 months a year.
“My high school coach did a great job of keeping me in the water for four months, but once state was over in November it didn’t really matter. I swam every now and then but nothing serious.”
But to swim at a place like LSU, in the SEC, part-time is not an option. Oquist, 5-foot-7, played plenty of sports as a youngster, from soccer to skating and softball, which she said she misses. But swimming is a full-time job and last year it finally paid off for her at the SEC Championships, when she set LSU records in the 100 and 200 backs and qualified for the NCAA Championships. She also swam the leadoff leg of the 400 medley relay that also broke the school record.
“I did not expect that to happen at all,” Oquist said. “The night before the relay at SECs I was crying to Jeana and I was saying I was going to swim so bad. But everything fell into place and I swam so fast and it was so much fun and made me fall back in love with swimming.”
This year she’s swimming even faster.
“I came back with such a different attitude this year. I think a lot of it has to do with that I’m an upperclassman now and you know the ropes and the coaches and I know Jeana so much better.”
Overall, the LSU women are having a strong season, too.
“We’re swimming really well and it’s fun to be a part of,” Oquist said.
“She’s such a good person,” Kempe said. “She cares so much about the team and LSU and being a Tiger and holding herself to the standard what we want people to be every day. Being an LSU Tiger means everything to her and it shows all the time.
“And she holds her teammates accountable to that, as well, and that’s made our women’s team better.”
The coaches are almost taken aback by her competitiveness in a sport in which everyone is extremely competitive.
“She’s the most competitive person,” Kempe said. “And not necessarily in the pool, but in everything she does.”
“She hates to lose,” Geyer chimed in.
“She hates to lose,” Kempe repeated.
“100 percent true,” Caley admitted sheepishly.
Mike Oquist recalled asking his daughter about it more than 10 years ago.
“We were sitting in a restaurant one day, me and her and her late mother, and she was young and had just gotten done winning. And I was watching her and saw that she wasn’t very excited about winning,” Mike Oquist said with a laugh.
“I was just trying to get in her brain, because as a young girl she had done very well swimming. She always did well in the big races. So I asked her, ‘Caley, what motivates you? Why do you want to win?’ And she says, ‘Dad, I don’t want to win. I just hate losing.’ A 12-year-old girl eating a piece of pumpkin pie. It was hilarious.”
That attitude has taken her far. There’s still a regular season to finish and then she’s among the favorites in her events in the SEC Championships February 17-20 at Auburn. The NCAA meet is March 19-21 in Greensboro, N.C.
Mike Oquist and his wife, Cindy, will be there for those meets.
“I miss watching her swim all the time,” Mike said.
Cindy lost her husband in a car crash. Caley can’t say enough good things about her and the extended family they’ve created, since she had three kids of her own and Caley has two older siblings.
And in her mind Heidi will be there, too. Caley is reminded of her mom daily, not the least of which is from the tattoos she has.
On her right foot it reads, “You and me.”
“That was something I always said to my mom before I swam and I’ll even say it now. Like I can’t do it by myself.”
On her left shoulder is a tattoo of the plant bird of paradise, Heidi’s favorite. And on Caley’s right side is the children’s night-time prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep … “
And she also has on her left wrist a message from her dad, “Keep dreaming.”
On Caley’s Facebook page is a picture of her with her parents and brothers at a 2002 LSU football game when the Tigers played South Carolina, the then-little girl holding up a game-day program and smiling for the camera. It was a nice visit at the time for Heidi, who swam at LSU from 1983-86.
Caley said her mom rarely let on that she was even sick.
“I remember her hair falling out. My mom was a bad-ass. I never saw her cry, never saw her throw up and at that age I didn’t even know cancer made you sick. She did a really good job and so did my dad. We went on a family vacation to Hawaii in March and that was when I realized something was really wrong with her.”
It’s all worked out, of course, for Caley, who recognizes that it’s a good story.
“It was a crappy story, but my life has definitely turned around for the better,” she said. “I count my blessings every day.”
She smiled.
“My mom did die and it was sad and I miss her every single day, but I have an amazing, amazing step-family that is my family now and I have LSU. It’s cool to be a Tiger and it’s even way cooler to be a student-athlete here.
“And if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be here and if it wasn’t for her passing I don’t know if I would have been so motivated to come down here and I did and every day I’m thankful.”