Just keep swimming: I started swimming competitively at the age of five. I started swimming for a summer league team call the Mission Valley Barracudas. Once I turned seven years old, I started swimming with the older kids, which were technically categorized as the faster kids. My coaches wanted me to swim with the older group, which consisted with junior high, and high school aged kids because swimming with my age group bracket was no longer challenging. Swimming was my favorite thing to do and still is. If I wasn’t swimming, I was most likely playing with Jonny and Alex or playing with my Legos. For the most part swimming in the older group was fun and challenging. Having longer and tougher workouts made me unstoppable when it came to competing …show more content…
Since I was doing just enough to pass and graduate high school, they plan was for me to go to junior college so I could still swim for Debbie. I had ruined my chances to receiving scholarship from major colleges because of my grades. My swimming had attracted lots of interest, however the colleges saw me as a academic risk. I felt so ashamed in myself. I was a fool for thinking my swimming talent would be enough to swim for any college I wanted. My parents were disappointed to but not because I didn’t get offers from schools. They were upset because they knew that I knew how badly screwed up my chances. Debbie on the other hand was not as disappointed I though she would be. She looked at it as two more years to coach me. Plus she thought going to junior college would help me understand the value of education. During the summer of graduating from high school is when I got burnt out. Even though I swan year round, summer is still the busiest time for swimming. After my final championship meet of the summer, I knew I was done. After the last swim meet of the summer, Debbie gave all the swimmers two weeks off from swimming. During that time I really thought about every thing and decided that I needed to take a break before I start disliking swimming. I expressed this to Debbie over the phone because I could not bear to tell her in person. She was not happy and thought I was making a big mistake in stopping. She suggested that I take a month off to think about it some more but to not fully walk away. I took her advice and took a month off from swimming. During that month I did not really think about swimming or miss it. I was too focused on getting prepared to start college. Once a month passed by, Debbie gave me a call to find out what was on my mind and if I wanted to come to practice. Debbie is a difficult person to say no to. I went up to her
“Why don’t you use your locker? You’re going to have back problems before you even graduate”. These are words that are repeated to me daily, almost like clockwork. I carry my twenty-pound backpack, full of papers upon papers from my AP classes. The middle pouch of my backpack houses my book in which I get lost to distract me from my unrelenting stress. The top pouch holds several erasers, foreshadowing the mistakes I will make - and extra lead, to combat and mend these mistakes. Thick, wordy textbooks full of knowledge that has yet to become engraved in my brain, dig the straps of my backpack into my shoulders. This feeling, ironically enough, gives me relief - my potential and future success reside in my folders and on the pages of my notebooks.
I have been swimming year-round on a club team since the age of six and when I was younger improving came relatively easily. However, around age 13, I hit a training plateau despite having the same work ethic and focus that I had previously had. I grew to despise swimming and at points I wanted to quit. However, unlike Junior, I had role models and mentors who were positive influences on me and who helped me to overcome this challenge. Primarily, I had several of my best friends on the team who convinced me to keep persevering and to not simply quit the sport that I loved so much just because I was no longer dropping time. For example, every day I watch my close friends Lizanne and Cate come to practice and give it their all, regardless of the numerous injuries and medical issues that plagued their swimming career; their positive outlook and dedication motivated me to try even harder than I had before. Moreover, I had by parents, something that Junior did not have; my parents were always there to support me after yet another disappointing meet reminding me that “you get five minutes for a win and five minutes for a lost”. My parents where my voice of reason as I tried to work through my issues; they were always there to encourage me, but also were very honest with me
Are you scared of roller coasters? I used to be scared but I end up overcoming my challenge. Only a few years ago I would not ride a roller coaster if my life depend on it. They horrified me. I hated the feeling of weightlessness. The zero gravitational force sent a tingling sensation into every extremity of my body which me excruciatingly uncomfortable. I despised ascending to such towering heights. I worried that the coaster would break, and I would be stuck on a wobbly track, hundreds of feet in the air, waiting for hours to be rescued. Going upside down scared me the most. I feared that I would fall out at the top and plummet to terrain below.
During my freshman year of college, I had met one of my best friends, who go by name Jill. (She lives in New Jersey and while I live in Pennsylvania) I found it to be strange that sometimes, it feels like we have grown up with one another but in reality we have only one another for four years and I couldn’t be more thankful. I can remember when we met at school as if it was yesterday.
Oh, how I love to clean! I would have never imagined me cleaning my bedroom for the very last time. I remember vividly the last look I gave that empty bedroom of mine. There were sudden flashbacks of the memories I had made in that house, rather it was helping my mother cook or raising my kitten, my entire childhood was spent in between those walls. Several tears were cried in this house, like the time I about lost my grandfather due to a heart attack, or the several laughs I had with my friends at each one of my birthday parties that were hosted here. I kept looking around my house and couldn’t help but notice the door in the kitchen that
The sport of swimming began changing my life at age four. I won every time I touched the water, but I was unaware of my true talent.
It was a beautiful summer morning at around ten in the morning when my dog ran in and jumped up onto my bed scaring me. I sat up with a tired look on my face and looked over at my dog and shook my head with a laugh “Morning to you too” I say laughing as I patted her head and got up and out of bed. Since I lived right on the lake I could hear the ducks and loons calling on the lake. It was very peaceful next to the lake even with boaters on the lake.
Have you ever had a moment in time that seems like minutes or hours even though it was only a few seconds? Have you ever seen everything before you play out in slow motion, where you are aware of everything around you, yet not knowing what was going on? I have, and as I look back on it, I feel very blessed and protected. On March 21, 1987, I decided to take a little swim in our swimming pool and almost drowned.
To start off this story, we have to go back to the beginning of the school year of August 2012. When I started at Lutcher High School, I decided to join the swim team. I was only a seventh grader, but I wanted to be part of the team with my older cousin, Kadam. Swimming started, and I struggled due to my size and strength. I never gave up, though. My goal was one day to follow in my cousin’s footsteps and qualify for state. My cousin, Kadam, was unexpectedly killed in a car accident a week before the state meet my sophomore year. Coach Lanny who is always so serious and fussing asked the swim team to allow me to travel with the qualifying swimmers to state, and I was able to have a little taste of how I would feel if I could reach my dream
I started competitive swimming when I was twelve years old, while most societally deemed "good" swimmers started swimming before they were even in school, giving them close to a decade's advantage over me in practicing the sport.
I was four years old when I started swimming, I learned quick and was able to do team skills only after being there a few months, yet the team coach declined me because you had to be five to be on the team. My parents pulled me out of swim and decided to put me in gymnastics to stay in shape until I turned five. When my next birthday came around and it was time for me to go back to swim, I didn’t want to. I stayed in recreational classes for around three years mainly doing it for fun but when I was eight years old, I switched to Shooting Stars Gymnastics where I began competitive gymnastics.
Tiptoeing on the grimy, yellow-tiled pool deck with my caps goggles in hand, I felt a little uneasy with the new swimmers who just tried out and made the team. Standing in the corner with her arms crossed, there was this one new girl, Ann, who had the meanest look on her face. For nearly two years, I made sure to jump into a different lane than her every practice. Every swim meet she would walk around with the older girls and I did not dare to make eye contact with her. Our swim coach basically forced us into the same lane when we began to train for the same race. She was the only other girl in that lane so I had no other choice but to talk to her. One day she asked me if I had seen this funny video on Youtube and to my surprise, our conversation
Have you ever had a moment in time that seems like minutes or hours even though it was only a few seconds? Have you ever seen everything before you play out in slow motion, where you are aware of everything around you, yet not knowing what was going on? I have, and as I look back on it, I feel very blessed and protected. On December 22, 01, I decided to take a little swim in our swimming pool and almost drowned. I still can remember it like yesterday. This incident almost cost me my life,
My family is from Plainfield, New Jersey. During the summer we would frequent the public pools in our community. For as long as I could remember I have always loved the water. As a child, I would often jump in the water with no resistance or fear, and would have to be rescued by a family member. These near drowning experiences never place fear into my heart because I would immediately return to the water. In middle school, I decided to join the swim team. After all the years I spent jumping in the pool with no inhibitions, I had never learned how to swim. I spent a good portion of the swim season learning the basics: breathing under water, breathing techniques, kicking and proper stroking. By mid season my coaches were confident enough in my swimming abilities for me to swim in the 25 meter races. And by this time I recognized swimming lack it’s original zing, as an organized sport. By ninth grade I
We finish what we start. This was the motto that kept me going during the strenuous training period for a marathon. But prior to that, I must confess, I wasn’t an athlete. I was never interested in playing sports, except for recreational badminton. During gym class, I would walk three quarters of the time when it time for the dreaded mile run. I preferred staying indoors and sitting on the couch and watch movies. The first time I had heard about a marathon training program, called Dreamfar, in my school, I thought to myself, what kind of crazy person would want to run a marathon? Never did I realize, eight months later, I would be that crazy person.