From national records to Olympic Trials to team records, senior Claire Maiocco has done it all while battling type one juvenile diabetes.

  “It’s just normal because I’ve had diabetes for so long, but I guess it’s a lot more planning. It’s just a lot more work to account for other stuff too,” Maiocco said about living with diabetes.

  Her coach, Rocco Aceto, has to make daily adjustments to Maiocco’s workouts due to her blood sugar.

  She gets out after warm up or around four o’clock to check her blood sugar to get a baseline at where it is.

   “If it’s too low, I’ll eat carbs, which is basically just sugar, so I just carry around tabs of sugar which I eat. And if it’s high, then I give myself insulin, which is basically what your body would do, but my body doesn’t, so I have to do it myself,” Maiocco said.

  She also will get out periodically during practice to check it.

  Approximately 8 percent or 24 million people are diagnosed with diabetes each year and 5 percent of those have type one diabetes. Most people who are diagnosed with type one are under the age of 20. Type one is more rare than type two diabetes. In type two, your body does not produce enough insulin or resists insulin.

  If you have type one diabetes, your body does not produce insulin, which is a hormone made by the pancreas that allows your body to use sugar from the food you eat for energy. Insulin also helps to make sure your blood sugar doesn’t get too high or too low.

  Maiocco started swimming when she was eight years old. She joined the Trinity swim team when she was in sixth grade in 2009.

  Without diabetes, Maiocco doesn’t know if she would have even started swimming. “If I didn’t have diabetes, I don’t even know if I would have started down the path of swimming because way back swimming was the easiest sport to manage with diabetes,” Maiocco said.

   But diabetes has not stopped Maiocco. In the summer of 2016, Claire went to Olympic Trials for the 100-meter butterfly and placed 103 overall.

    In 2015, she broke the short course meter 100-butterfly national record by over a second with a time of 1:01.06. The previous record was a 1:02.14. Later at that meet, she broke the 200-meter freestyle relay record with juniors Summer Heidish and Grace Olivardia and freshman in college Caroline White with a time of 1:46.98. The previous record was a 1:48.33.

   She has many team records including the 100-yard butterfly and 100-meter butterfly, her best event. 

  Maiocco will be attending the University of Michigan for college next year.

  “I like what I do, and I work hard at it,” Maiocco said about her secret to success. “It takes an extra amount of effort than other people. I mean, I’m doing the work, but I’m also doing the diabetes work so it’s just kind of like an extra thing, but there’s no secret. It’s literally just hard work and my hard work just happens to be on two fronts.