In 2022, at the age of 56, Zappe, who is now a swim coach and motivational speaker, completed the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming, which included 29 miles around Manhattan (2019), 21 miles across the English Channel (2021), and 20 miles across the Catalina Channel (2022) as a solo swimmer.

Now a resident of Mechanicsburg, Zappe grew up in Bloomsburg, where she and her two sisters enjoyed spending many hours in their above-ground pool.

“We moved to a school with an indoor pool when I was in eighth grade, and that changed my life,” she said. “I was able to join the high school team and have never stopped swimming.”

Upon graduating from high school, Zappe started teaching and coaching swimming, something she continued to do throughout her college career at Penn State University.

She thought about pursuing a professional career in coaching, but at the time, she wasn’t sure how to go about it. She simply didn’t know much about collegiate swimming or coaching.

“I didn’t swim on the PSU swim team, but I continued to swim for fitness and intramurals in college,” she said.

After graduating from PSU with a Bachelor of Science degree in quantitative business analysis, Zappe enjoyed a 20-year career in information technology at Bucknell University, where she earned her master’s degree in business administration.

But swimming was still in her blood, and in 1999, she joined a Masters swim team and returned to competing in meets and at Masters Nationals.

In 2009, Zappe said she realized she had “done all that I wanted to do in my various positions at Bucknell … it just seemed like the end of a chapter.”  

The opening of her next chapter came in the form of a request by her son’s swim coach, asking her to return to coaching.

“For some reason I felt that I didn’t know enough to coach anymore,” she said.

Under his tutelage, though, she regained her confidence and returned to coaching with the Sunbury YMCA.

“In the meantime, I got certified to teach efficient freestyle through Total Immersion,” she said. “And my love of open-water swimming was born!”

Zappe explained that to her, the difference between open-water swimming and swimming in a pool is like the difference between running on the open road and running on a treadmill.

“In open water, I feel free and open and there are no walls. It’s pure adventure to me,” she said.

Her first foray into open-water swimming was a 1-mile swim in a lake in 2010 … which led to swimming in rivers, oceans, bays, and channels and from 2-mile swims to 3 miles, 10 miles, and 15 miles, and then 29 miles around Manhattan in 2019.

Even as she was building her swimming career, she was busy building her coaching career, working with West Shore YMCA, Messiah University, and Keystone Aquatics. Zappe continues to provide private coaching services for competitive swimmers and adults.

“I love the relationships I build with my swimmers,” she said. “I tell people that I really teach confidence, and swimming is merely the way I do it.”

Finding the confidence in yourself that is needed to pursue a dream in any field can be tough, and sometimes it takes a while to get there.

“From 2014–2017, I was lucky enough to do all three of the Triple Crown swims as part of a six-person relay team with friends. In those swims, we swim for one-hour increments in rotation. We go when the (boat) pilot says we can go. That gave me exposure to those bodies of water,” she said.

It also gave her an idea — could she do these swims on her own?

“On the last one of those team swims, the English Channel, I remember wondering if I could do it alone … it took a year of pondering, but I booked a pilot for a solo swim one year later.”

Zappe made good on her promise to herself to try to achieve the Triple Crown as a solo swimmer. It wasn’t easy. The order in which she had hoped to accomplish the swims, using each one to train for the next, had to be changed due to COVID.  

Her most difficult, and coincidentally final, swim took place in September 2022: the Catalina Channel, a stretch of Pacific Ocean that flows between Santa Catalina Island and the coast of Southern California.

“It’s a 21-mile swim and the only swim I have done where I had to cross the channel by boat before swimming it. In other words, you look at the whole darn swim before attempting it,” she said.

Rough currents, thanks to a hurricane passing through two days before, made the swim even more difficult than it might have been.

“I swam largely in place for about six hours, making little progress due to the strong currents. It was a very mentally challenging swim,” she said.

Although she swims alone, and must be medically cleared before attempting a solo swim, Zappe is far from being alone when she’s out there in the water.  

“I have a team with me … they truly take care of me,” she said. “They are in charge of throwing my liquid feeds and meds to me, they keep me on pace or tell me to swim faster … they encourage me and they watch every stroke I take.

“They, along with the boat pilot who is in charge of the swim, truly hold my life in their hands. I could not do what I do without them.”

When naming their team, Zappe knew she wanted to include the word “optimist,” and after booking her boat pilot, she recalls being surprised to see his boat was named The Optimist — one hint that they were headed in the right direction in choosing a team name.

“Then, while preparing for the English Channel swim, England had been locked down due to COVID but had just lifted that restriction,” she said.

Concerned about the possibility of a 10-day quarantine, Zappe recalls one of her teammates saying they just needed to be eternal optimists, believing that it would all work out. Taking that as a sign, “our team name, the Eternal Optimists, was born,” she said.

Today, Zappe does motivational speaking about her English Channel crossing solo swim, and her Triple Crown accomplishments, through her company Eternal Optimist, LLC, located in Mechanicsburg.

“I take people across the channel with me through video and pictures … and I also share the lessons I learned about myself in preparing for it,” she said. “I love inspiring others. Find your thing and work toward it. Don’t be afraid. Ask yourself, ‘What if I can?’ It’s a very powerful question.”

Women, as Zappe said, tend to wear many hats.

“We have a tendency to put ourselves last. To feel guilty to want something for ourselves. But it’s OK; we can have it,” she said.

No matter what your age, embracing your years, and all the life experiences you’ve had, should be something to be celebrated.

“I firmly believe that I could not have swum the English Channel at age 25, 35, 45 — I needed to be 55, with my 55 years of life experience behind me,” she said. “With age comes wisdom and knowledge and perspective. Embrace it.”