Freestyle Reflections Another Swim-Centric Step for Freestyle Swimwear
The guiding principle for Audrey Tirrell in founding Freestyle Swimwear was finding products she wished she could use when she swam. The discomfort and drabness of training suits has been the animating force behind the company she founded while still at Fordham University.
So in assessing the other parts of her swim life through the lens of product development, Tirrell hit on a niche quickly.
Throughout her career – at Nations Capital Swim Club, a season at New Hampshire, then three at Fordham – she was devoted to journaling. Whatever transpired at practice, what she felt physically and emotionally, she would jot down, filling nearly a dozen notebooks over more than a decade.
Freestyle Reflections journal; Photo Courtesy: Freestyle Swimwear
As is her process, she looked for products that could make something so valuable to her accessible to others. And when she found existing options sorely wanting, she created her own.
The result is the Freestyle Reflections journal, what Tirrell labels as “a guide to mental wellness for swimmers.” Instead of the sparse, glorified training logs she found on the market, Tirrell developed a tool “super specific to the journey” of swimmers, a hallmark of her company’s ethos.
“It sounds like that would be such an obvious thing to be on the market, but there literally isn’t anything,” Tirrell said. “So I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m already trying to tailor my products to what doesn’t exist already, and that was kind of a no-brainer. I was just like, how does this not exist?”
Tirrell poured nearly a year into bringing it into existence. She authored a 250-plus-page book with mantras, messages of support, prompts for reflection, goal-setting and illustrations. Tirrell included space for all the basic “what did I do today” entries, but also daily check-in scales to assess physical and mental well-being beyond quantifying muscle soreness. It showcases little details that Tirrell knows are easily overlooked in a hectic schedule but can snowball, issues she kept at bay with her journaling habit.
As is the theme with her by-swimmers-for-swimmers swimwear, Tirrell also sought to make it beautiful, to show the attention to detail in its creation and the care she hopes swimmers will show themselves.
“I wanted to use my insights of now being someone on the other side of it, because I feel like I have a much more clear mind,” she said. “When you’re in the swimming day-to-day grind, it’s so easy to just get consumed by it and feel like it’s the only thing that’s on your mind 24/7. So the point of the journal is to put insights on the hard stuff and how to get through it, but also giving insights to the other side.”
The irony in this latest product launch is how creating the journal became an exercise in reflection for Tirrell. She graduated in 2023, forming Freestyle Swimwear while still an undergrad with the goal of making swimsuits that were comfortable and flattering to the female body in fun designs to break the monotony of training. She shaped her swimwear with swimmers’ input, and since graduation, she’s remained in the swimming sphere, working with brand ambassadors and constantly soliciting feedback to improve her product.
Freestyle Reflections was a way of distilling some of the more ephemeral parts of that experience, for her to process her feelings about swimming, identifying her priorities in the process of helping others. She believes it’s important that the product comes from a “normal college girl” rather than an Olympian, making the experience more relatable and feel more attainable.
“Everything’s really fresh,” she said. “I’m almost still processing and recovering from my whole journey as a swimmer. So that’s sort of a tool of how I processed my swim career. I was really thinking about it like, wow, I really went through all this and learned all this. Going through the journal was a reflection of what I’ve been through.”
It’s been a big summer for Tirrell and Freestyle Swimwear. She got to celebrate her first Olympian in Indiana’s Anna Peplowski, who fell in love with the suits and Freestyle’s women-owned story and has taken to evangelizing for it. Tirrell counts U.S. junior national teamer and NC State freshman (and Swimming World Female High School Swimmer of the Year) Leah Shackley among her roster of athletes.
Meets like U.S. Olympic Trials were a massive chance for the word of mouth that Tirrell’s brand depends on to spread, with several swimmers reaching out to volunteer their services as content creators after trying the suits.
Tirrell is working with more colleges, starting with her alma mater. She’s designed team practice suits for the Rams, a goal of hers since she was on the team. Other teams are getting on board, from Peplowski’s cadre of fans in Bloomington to schools in the Atlantic 10 like George Mason.
Tirrell’s process is inherently collaborative. Each new partnership brings new ideas to improve new generations of suits, in fit and colorways. It’s all built around serving the often-overlooked needs of female swimmers. Seeing her product resonate is most fulfilling, and it’s what she hopes the Freestyle Reflections can do on a different level.
“It’s so cool getting feedback from girls who are incredibly fast and on that major level, and them being like, this is so comfortable, this is such a cute suit,” she said. “It’s been such an awesome summer getting these really fast girls to finally try Freestyle.”
