Bonnie Kestner isn’t a media hound. In fact, it took prodding from at least one Sweet Briar colleague to get the associate professor and longtime swim coach to tell college relations about the 10 — count ‘em 10 — gold medals she won at the Virginia Senior Games.

On May 4 and 5, Kestner won 10 swimming events in the 55-59 age group and set Virginia Master’s Short Course meters records in every event she swam. Her times also put her within reach of several world top-10 age-group records, although those statistics won’t be published until 2008.

“We have a prayer group that meets once a week and she mentioned it at our meeting,” Jim Durand, head of Sweet Briar’s engineering program, said. “Can you imagine? We have a world class swimmer here at Sweet Briar.”

Kestner, a longtime SBC swim coach, won 10 medals May 4-5 at the Virginia Senior Games.Kestner, 55, has been swimming competitively since 1966, when she was a 14-year-old student at Cold Spring Harbor High School on Long Island, N.Y. She was a member of her high school’s first swim team, and later became the first woman to swim competitively for Yale.

She’s still in the pool five mornings a week, but these days she competes only every five years when she moves into a new age bracket. Even so, as the 2007 Virginia Senior Games neared, Kestner was lacking motivation.

“I debated about whether to do this, because I really don’t enjoy competing that much,” she said. “Basically, I only do it once every five years when I age up in Masters. I try to see where I am. … I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it.”

It was a “busy time.” Travel was expensive. She hadn’t paid her U.S. Masters dues. Kestner came up with all sorts of excuses, but then a conversation with friends gave her the inspiration she needed.

“I talked with a couple of … my Christian friends, and they thought it would be a good thing to do,” she said. “They encouraged me to go, and they said, ‘You’ll glorify the Lord in what you do.’ ”

So Kestner went to the meet, and in the span of 48 hours — sometimes with only five minutes rest between events — she won the 100-meter individual medley, 200 freestyle, 100 backstroke, 400 IM, 200 butterfly, 200 IM, 50 backstroke, 100 butterfly, 200 backstroke and 100 freestyle.

“It was mentally as well as physically challenging,” Kestner said later in an e-mail to friends and colleagues at the Sports Outreach Institute, a Lynchburg-based organization that spreads the Gospel through sports.

“The great challenge was swimming both the 400 individual medley and the 200 butterfly in the same evening. After swimming a strong 400 IM, I ended up being the only one to swim the 200 fly as the other two competitors scratched out.

“I was tempted to scratch, too, as I knew well the pain of swimming that event, but felt that God wanted me to do it, maybe to prepare me for other challenges that I might face later in life.

“My timer asked me if I wanted her to cheer for me. I asked her to just please pray that I would finish. I prayed for God to give me the strength and stamina, and he did. I was even able to hold my stroke together for the whole swim.”

After leaving the blocks, Kestner — alone in the pool — swam a 3:19.15, a time that would have ranked her fifth in the world for women 55-59 in 2006. “I just attribute everything I’m able to do to him,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been on a journey, especially lately, as far as how I can glorify him through my life in different ways.

“And I didn’t really see swimming as a way I could do that … I’m starting to see it now, that he can take this aging body and do something with it.”

The weekend also rekindled Kestner’s competitive spirit, so much in fact that she might forego her race-every-five-years rule. “Now that I’ve found out that I really could be in the top-ten in the world in my age group, that’s really pretty exciting, so I think I will maybe train a little more seriously,” she said.

“I don’t even know yet exactly what my next goal is as far as my next competition, but I have more of a purpose now than I did. I was just pleasantly surprised at what God enabled me to do, so I thought, ‘Well, maybe he wants me to do more of it.’ ”