AMHERST, N.Y. — The weather is starting to come around but all winter long, athletes from Buffalo to the Big Apple have been doing their thing in the pool.

Schools from across the country brought some international and local talent to Buffalo for some “MAC-tion” at the Mid Atlantic Conference championship swim meet.

"You don't feel the energy until you're behind the blocks and it's dead silent before they say, ‘take your mark’ and you can just feel your heart racing," said Alexa Von Holtz, a swimmer for Ball State University who hails from Mexico, New York, just outside of Syracuse.

The roar of the pool deck and crowd, the buzzer that kicks of every heat — these are just some of the things that get her going. 

"So I've been doing it for a while, and it means a lot to me to be here today, swimming at the Division I level for Ball State,” she said.

Von Holtz spends her days practicing and studying on the Cardinals’ campus in Indiana so it was a welcome home for her at the MAC.

"My family’s able to see, come and see me swim, which isn't very common these days," she said as the meet was hosted just outside of Buffalo, a solid two and a half hours down the thruway from Central New York.

She earned a silver medal in the 200-yard butterfly and a selection as second team All-MAC in her sophomore campaign, but her journey doesn't stop at the end of the pool. 

"I'm studying nursing," she said. "So it's definitely a hard task to be a student-athlete and be a nursing major. But the program at Ball State definitely makes it a dream. I can say I'm living."

All of that is something aspiring not for just everyone gathered for a championship swim meet.

"It means a lot, especially coming from such a small town that you can't do it no matter where you're from," said Von Holtz. "You don't have to go from these big, fancy schools and that little small towns can produce true athletes."