Swimming is on the rise as a popular sport in the US these days. The Olympics has shined a pretty bright light on it, and in response, people of all ages are picking it up. Not only is the sport fun, but it's extremely good for your health now, and later in life. Growing up as a swimmer, people would always ask questions that they'd ask to any other athlete, only to realize swimming is not the same as other sports. Although it can compare to some better than others, it still has its own language. Here are a list of questions we get all the time, that don't really have answers, or are too complicated to explain to someone who has no swim background.

1. Did you win your meet?

"Well, I won my heat."
"Is that not your event?"
"Not really, each event has...."

Do you see where I'm going with this one? In this case, swimming is like any other individual sport. Each event will have heats, normally based on speed. So 100 backstroke is the event, but the heat number is three. It sounds complicated, but watching the Olympics will give you a demonstration of it. It is possible to win an actual event individually, but more times than not, we will just give you a brief "yes" or "no" and move on.

2. Are you faster than (insert name here)?

Each swimmer has their own warm-up routine, pre-race playlist, swim gear and even strategy of what they want to accomplish. All of these factors play hand in hand with the mental endurance swimmers have during a race, to help them succeed. Things like relationships, grades, bad indigestion and even a lousy lunch can throw someone's speed off whack. Thus, making it extremely hard to compare two swimmers unless they are EXACTLY the same.

3. Do you smell chlorine?

..................Yes, I do......................

4. Can you hang out?

"No" will be the normal response. Swimming takes a lot of time and dedication, as stated before. This requires swimmers to not only practice in the pool, but outside as well. Dry land practices were always the worst, but cross training builds a lot of mental and physical strength. In high school, the football players always nagged that swimming wasn't a sport, then one day I forced one of my close friends to try it out. Boy, oh boy, he was not expecting to feel the way he did after practice. With this, swimmers take a lot of time of their life and set it aside for swimming. This being, practices during the week and long meets on the weekends, leaves little time for movie dates, slumber parties, and video game tournaments.

5. Are you gonna be in the Olympics?

For some swimmers, the answer is yes. For most, it is a no. Not only does it take great dedication and skill to practice hard enough to even make it to trials, but a lot goes into being an Olympian that people don't realize. It is a dream for every athlete who participates in an Olympic sport to be in the games, but it really has to be your one and only focus for a long while before these dreams are possible.

Swimming gets a pretty bad rep from outsiders, and I am so happy to see that it is becoming more popular in the states. I would never have traded my swimming career for anything in this world, even though some more free time would have been nice. Being around your teammates and coaches for these long periods of time, facing both good and bad races and all sorts of challenges, creates such a family environment. Growing up, my swim buddies were all I had and I still have them today. For this, I am forever thankful.