During high school, when social privacy is non-existent and cliques are formed for the sake of companionship, only a few close friends knew that Laura Randall was living two separate identities, and that one of them was leading her to greatness.

Randall, now Laura Woodhead, was a swimmer, and when she arrived at East Gaston High School in 1982 after years of competing for private clubs, swimming was not one of the school’s sports, and her training sessions and state championships were unknown to her classmates.

“I enjoyed swimming in Charlotte (at the Mecklenburg Aquatic Club pool at Sharonview Country Club, now SwimMAC Carolina) and having a separate life outside of school that only my closest school friends really knew about. I was able to focus on school during the day and my swimming the rest of the time,” said Woodhead, who would leave home at 4:20 a.m. six days a week, practice before school, then drive back to MAC in the afternoons. Sometimes, she said, her mom would drive her through the morning darkness, then wait, asleep in the car. “Years later,” she said, “I would thank her. I was very fortunate to have incredibly supportive parents.”

Woodhead’s persistence led to multiple USA Swimming North Carolina state championships, before she took control of changing her athletic anonymity and got East Gaston a swim team – a team consisting of one person. “I wanted to be able to represent East Gaston at the state high school swim meet, so during my freshman year, I petitioned to swim solo,” she said. “Two years later, there were several other club swimmers at East Gaston who also wanted to swim, so we worked together to start a team.”

She convinced her German teacher, Mardi Lambert, to act as coach/sponsor. During her four years at EG, she finished in the top 8 in all her events at the NCHSAA 3A State Championships, winning sectional titles in 1985-86 and was runner-up at states in the 100-breaststroke in 1986.

College letters came, and suddenly the girl who first jumped a pool at age 5 at the Mount Holly Swim & Racket Club was reading recruiting prose from the University of North Carolina, Duke, Columbia, UCLA and Stanford, among others. “I visited Stanford during the summer before my senior year, and I fell in love with the school and the coach, George Haines, so it was always a front-runner,” she said. “I just had to convince my parents to let me go so far from home.”

Woodhead was a seven-time NCHSAA state championship finalist and East Gaston’s female Athlete of the Year in 1986. At Stanford, where she focused on breaststroke and individual medley, she was part of two PAC 10 championship teams, in 1987 and 1988, and helped lead The Cardinal to second place at NCAAs in 1987. All that has led her to be inducted into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

Her junior year at Stanford, Woodhead had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff and torn labrum in her right shoulder, and she made the decision to retire.

It had been a long career: Six seasons at Mount Holly’s pool, with a pile of county championships and records (including a 14.4 in the 8-under 25-yard freestyle, that may still stand). Winning her first state championship at age 11 in the 200 IM in 1977, with the Gaston YMCA Gators and later swimming for the Johnston Memorial YMCA. Qualifying for the U.S. Nationals at age 15. Winning several USA Swimming and zone all-star titles in freestyle, breaststroke and IM, and being ranked in the top 16 nationally.

But it was time to move on and, after graduating from college in 1990 with a political science degree, Woodhead returned to Mount Holly to begin her quest to be a lawyer, and worked alongside Charlotte lawyer George Daly. She also coached age-group swimmers at MAC. But there was something about California….

In Spring 1991, she returned to the West Coast for law school, and graduated in 1995 from the University of California-Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. For the last 13 years, she’s worked as a corporate attorney in the pharmaceutical industry, including the last seven with BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc.

But like a lot of athletes who retire, who move on with their lives away from sport, Woodhead found out in 1993 that permanently walking away is only permanent until you walk back.

She was recruited that year to join the master’s swim team at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, where she proceeded to finish in the top 16 at nationals in breaststroke and IM and win a national title in 1996 at the U.S. Short Course Nationals in the 200 mixed relay. She returned to Stanford’s campus in 2006 for the FINA World Master’s Swimming Championships to swim the breaststroke leg of the Olympic Club’s silver medal winning 200 Medley Relay.

She married Jeff Woodhead – who rowed crew at UC-Berkeley – in 1997 in San Francisco, and they have three children – Dylan (a rising high school senior), Quinn (high school sophomore) and Ella (born in 2004). The family lives about 11 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Our children have grown up in and around the water. It has been so rewarding for Jeff and I to watch our children participate in sports,” she said. Dylan recently was named to the USA Water Polo Youth National Team, Quinn plays on an under-14 water polo team and Ella swims, and plays water polo and basketball. For 25 years, the Woodheads have belonged to the South End Rowing Club on Aquatic Park in San Francisco.

And while California has their heart, Mount Holly still has the ability to tug her back to the place called home.

“I’m truly honored to be recognized by the Hall of Fame in my hometown. I’m so thankful to have grown up here with the support of my parents and family and many friends, neighbors, classmates, teachers and coaches,” she said. “This community had such a positive impact on my life, and I’m forever grateful.”