I’ve been swimming competitively for about 10 years, give or take. I can’t ever really remember when I started, although I think it was around six-years-old, but I can remember why. I had a talent for eating a lot of food in a short period of time: in fact, my parents always like to tell me the story of how I ate 10 dumplings in a span of about five minutes. I guess I could’ve been a competitive eater, but not before I became a rounded ball of fat.

I was gaining a lot of weight in not a lot of time. In fact, every year I gained about 10 pounds. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The potential future was even uglier. But that’s a story for a different time. As a solution, my dad placed me into a youth swimming program at my city’s athletic club. We were called the Barracudas, or the ‘Cudas for short, and man, was that a time for me to develop.

But this was also the time when I figured out the stroke I would want to swim for the rest of my career: butterfly. For the uninitiated or the unaware, butterfly is widely regarded as the toughest stroke because of its exhausting technique. In fact, it was because it was the toughest stroke that I wanted to learn how to swim it, and swim it well.

I remember going to my very first meet; I was probably eight or nine at this time. I also remember how I practically wet my suit when I stepped out onto the pool deck and saw the huge crowd of people surrounding the pool. But that feeling of apprehension disappeared when I dove in the water and flailed around for 45 seconds, going up and down the pool. After the meet, I told my mom “I loved it.”

Twelve years later, I’m still here, still swimming, and (somehow) still one of the co-captains of Coe College’s swim team. A lot happened in the years between, like personal records and school records being broken, but those pale in comparison to what I accomplished this year with my team. Our team’s gotten better each and every year I’ve been here, and being a part of that growth is so rewarding. We smashed school records, both relays and individuals, and put together one of the best teams I think this school has ever seen, both in terms of skill and personality.

The clichéd statement “We’re not a team, we’re a family” is passed around in some variation, but when you’ve experienced it, you know how true it is.

This year we went to Southern California for our winter training trip, which, by the way, is a huge plus about the swim team. I constantly think back to the beach days, particularly when we played football and tried to be athletic at a different sport. Simply put, there’s a reason we’re swimmers. But I’ll be damned if that wasn’t some of the best fun I’ve ever had in my entire life. That’s something I’ll always be grateful for: that our team had the chance to go somewhere different (read: warm), train our asses off, and still have time to enjoy life and have fun. A lot of teams, unfortunately, don’t have that opportunity.

Swimming has given me a lot of memories, but also a lot of challenges. Of course, the main challenge I face is my height: being the shortest guy on the team gets me a lot of crap, but I make up for it by being kinda-sorta fast. All kidding aside, swimming, like all athletics,is a huge time commitment and incredibly exhausting; more exhausting than some other sports, I’d argue. It takes a lot to go to swim practice in the morning, go to classes, go to swim practice in the afternoon, and then have to do homework, all the while having every muscle in your body telling you to go to sleep.

Next year I’ll be a senior. It will more than likely be my last year of competitive swimming, but hopefully it won’t be my last ever. It’s been a long ride, but it’s been incredibly rewarding. There’s a lot more I can say about swimming and what it's done for me, but that might be for another time.

But for now, consider this an ode to the sport of swimming and my swim team as a whole. You guys rock.