If Fort Mill High senior Alex Carr doesn't have gills now, he may in about four years.

Carr, who has committed to swim next year at Clemson University, will be spending a lot of time in the pool. Carr will be swimming long distance for the Tigers in the 500-yard freestyle, 1,000-yard freestyle and one-mile swim.

Carr was contacted about coming to swim at Clemson after the YMCA Nationals in April in Ft. Lauderdale, where he caught the eye of people with the university. He had been thinking about walking on at Georgia Tech or going to Virginia Tech, to just be a student. He was also contacted by Washington and Lee University and American University, as well as several colleges up North to swim.

But with the North being too cold, Clemson turned out to be where he will call home next.

"I had been thinking about it this past year and its just the college I wanted to go to," he said. "A lot of DII and DIII schools contacted me, but I wanted to go to a DI school."

With a 3.7 GPA, Carr will be majoring in general engineering at Clemson. Carr went down to Clemson earlier this month and said he knew he had made the right choice in committing to swim at the school.

"I wanted to go there," he said. "Not just for the swim team. But for the school. The coaches seem really personable and friendly. It's a close team."

Carr said he feels like being able to learn from the upper classmen will allow him to grow as a swimmer.

"If you are the best person on your team, you may not get any better," he said. "But if you have people over you, you can work up and make improvements."

A member of two state championship teams for Fort Mill, Carr has been swimming since he was 9 years old and said for him, swimming is black and white, meaning success is predicated on hard work. Carr has been swimming on the varsity team at Fort Mill since he was in the seventh grade

"You practice and you see your results in the meet," he said. "You can see what you put into it."

With the distances he is swimming, practice is nothing new to Carr.