When childhood innocence collides with natural talent, and determination and persistence join in, good things happen.

Athletes in year-round sports understand: There is no off-season, your sport is something you do, not something you play and your mindset is oblivious to anything different.

Carmen Baker made that discovery at age 8.

“I just dove into a pool when I was 8 and realized that it was for me. I don’t think at that point in my juncture that I thought anything about it,” she says. “I didn’t realize that other kids weren’t doing the same things. It was just my normal, everyday life.”

Baker, 39, grew up in Mount Holly and swam competitively for the Gaston Gators throughout her childhood, was East Gaston High School’s Athlete of the Year four years running, beginning in ninth grade while still in junior high and went on to break records at North Carolina State after being recruited by several colleges. Her resulting induction into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame is, she says, “a great honor.”

“I would say that at 10 years old I was going five days a week, after school, and when I was 13 it was six days a week and doubles in the summer,” she says. “I was efficient at multi-tasking, for sure. We went straight from school to my neighbors’ house to get a snack and carpool, then straight to practice, then homework, bath, eat, bed. Once I got to be about 13, I realized my friends were going to camp and things in the summer, but I had double practice and it was like, I get it. I’m doing something weird. My summers were in overdrive.”

Baker’s environment consisted of the Gaston YMCA pool, or an outdoor pool or at Belmont Abbey, where she would chisel at her times in the 200 and 400 individual medley, the butterfly, the breaststroke. At age 8, she swam fast enough to qualify for a Future Stars meet. At 10, she had four first-place finishes in a Junior Olympics meet, and as an 11-12 age grouper, she made Junior Olympics again and the Southeast Regional Championships.

“For some reason, I always had a propensity to do butterfly. No one wanted to do it, so I had a better shot at winning,” she says. “It’s definitely something that, like it can’t be taught. I did breaststroke at that age a lot, too. At 13, you’re allowed to do a 400 IM, and I realized I was an endurance swimmer. I’m definitely a come-from-behind type of person, so I wanted to swim faster than they did at the end.”

At the State Games for her 13-14 age group, Baker was first in the 400 IM, second in 100 fly, second in 200 backstroke, second in the 200 IM, second in the 200 fly, third in the 200 freestyle and third in the 200 breast.

She was chosen for the North Carolina Select Team in 1992, a group for which only 24 females are picked.

Her high school team practiced at Belmont Abbey, and she was East Gaston’s only entry in the 4A State Championships in 1992, as a ninth-grader, and made States every year afterward. In 1995, she was named 4A State female swimmer of the year for North Carolina.

Interest came from the University of Arizona (too far away, she says), and recruiting visits and talks followed with East Carolina, UNC-Chapel Hill, West Virginia, Clemson and N.C. State, which she chose because, well, it would be something different.

“My family was all Carolina fans, and as a little kid I always asked why, and they couldn’t tell me, so I picked a rival. Duke is the rival in basketball, but they didn’t have a scholarship available,” she says. “I knew I wanted to go to a North Carolina school to be close to home if I had to be. I just loved the people at the N.C. State campus, the swimmers were awesome, the coaches were phenomenal.”

She received a 55-percent scholarship, then after breaking the school record in the 400 IM by 2 seconds her freshman season at the ACC Championship, it became a full ride. She was named All-ACC and qualified for Senior Nationals. She broke her own school record as a senior.

Now, looking back at that 8-year-old who dove headfirst into a childhood of pursing the sport she loved, Bruce and Dawn Baker’s daughter can see a different story than the one she lived every day.

“My dad was a tennis player, and he got offered money to go to school but he wanted to go into the Marines. He and my mother were my biggest supporters, but I realize today the time and the money they poured into going to these meets,” she says. “It was a huge commitment on their end, and they never said anything about it. They were just like, what do you need? And, we’re here to support you.”

These days, Baker is an account executive and sales representative at Aramark in Huntersville, a refreshment services company that, she says, supplies more than one billion cups of coffee annually at approximately 100,000 locations in North America. When employees of everything from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses head to the break room for coffee, filtered water or snacks, chances are it came from her company. Though she’s a business person now, sometimes she looks back at her days in the pool.

She “kinda idolized” the swimmers of the day, like Janet Evans. And a girl from Charlotte, Kelly Frazer, who went on to swim at the University of Georgia. “She and I practiced together often, and she was someone I could never get in front of, so I tried to be faster,” Baker says, “because she was like the mouse you could never catch.

“And Greg Armstrong, my age-group coach, besides my parents, he was my greatest supporter, going with me on long trips like to Michigan for Nationals. He was like a second dad, always encouraging me and helping me shoot for my dreams, in a small town.

“I owe it all to him, my parents, and of course, God.”