LOS ANGELES, Calif. - In a statement of teamwork and empowerment for women across the globe, six female athletes will come together on June 16th to swim the Catalina Channel in a unique 40-mile relay event. All six swimmers are current or former student-athletes, representing three of the original Seven Sisters Colleges (Mount Holyoke College, Wellesley College, Smith College, Bryn Mawr College, Vassar College, Barnard and Radcliffe.)

The two-way Catalina Channel open-water swim is scheduled to begin the evening of Friday, June 16th from the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Each woman in the relay will swim in one-hour shifts starting first from the California mainland to Catalina Island. The swimmer will touch the shore and the turn around to swim all the way back.

Among the team members for this unique event are Abby Bergman (Culver City, Calif./Vistamar) '18, Charlotte Samuels (Ridgewood, N.J./Ridgewood) '20 and Eliza Cummings (Denver, Colo./Denver Center for Int'l Studies) '17 from Smith College, Rebecca Nevitt '88 and Gabriela Kovacikova '14 from Wellesley College, and Cathleen Pruden '16 from Mount Holyoke College.

Each of these women have competed and excelled at the college level, including the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC). Among the many highlights for the group include a previous swim across the Catalina Channel in 2016 by Bergman. Cummings complete a Plymouth to Provincetown crossing, while Samuels is the youngest swimmer to have completed the Triple Crown of swimming (English Channel, Catalina Channel and circumnavigation of Manhattan Island). Nevitt has also swum both the Manhattan and Catalina routes. Kovacikova swam the English Channel in 2013, while Prudent takes to the open water following a collegiate career that saw her earn NEWMAC Swimmer of the Year honors twice, in addition to All-America three straight years in the 400-individual medley.

The group released a mission statement for the swim ahead of this historic event stating: 'As Seven Sisters College students and graduates, we all believe in the power of women supporting women to achieve greatness. The six of us on this relay represent women of different ages, interests and geographical location, bound by a fierce love for challenge and passion for excellence that we developed at our respective colleges. We are embarking on this relay to be an example of empowerment; found when women take on an incredible challenge as a team and work together, and empowerment via paying it forward and being a role model for those who want to dream big and fulfill their own goals.'

The group's upcoming Channel swim will be followed by a live tracker on the following website: www.track.rs/7sisters and can also be followed www.facebook.com7sistersrelay.