No matter the time of day — unless it’s during school hours — Ian Fournier is ready to spring into action.

As a junior firefighter with the Monmouth Fire Department, he is on call all hours of the day and yet, it has not impinged on his swimming or academics at Monmouth Academy.

Fournier became a volunteer firefighter at age 14, following in the footsteps of his brother Nick Fournier and father, Chris Fournier, who also volunteer at the station.

“I can’t go during school, but pretty much when the call goes off, I have to suck it up and go,” he said. “Sometimes dinner just got made, but I still have to go and sometimes, we are out there past midnight.”

And after school, he usually practices swimming. Fournier has swam competitively since he was 10 and swam throughout his high school career for the Kennebec Valley YMCA Stingrays – a competitive swimming club. He swims the butterfly and the freestyle, but his best is the breaststroke.

Monmouth Academy senior Ian Fournier, seen May 23 in the school gym, has been a volunteer firefighter since age 14 and plans to attend Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., to study medicine. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Fournier received offers to swim at Division I schools such as Dartmouth College and Duke University but chose to focus on his education.

“I talked to my parents and thought it would be best for me to focus more on a school that prioritized education over athletics, so I committed to Williams College for Division III swimming,” he said.

Fournier doesn’t think firefighting is in his future and chose to study to become a professional in the medical field, such as a doctor or something in sports medicine.

But he wants to return to Maine and joked that when he was on his college tours, other potential students thought Maine is in Canada.

“There is so much to explore. Maine is a beautiful place,” Fournier said. “I don’t know where I’d end up, but (Maine) is beautiful. You have the ocean and then you have the woods.”