Swimming has always been apart of my life. Even from a young age, my parents had the good notion to get their kids into swim lesson before we could fear the water. Now, having a pool in our back yard significantly helped this cause, but nonetheless, water has never been something I have feared.

In middle school, I joined the volleyball team because of my friends. It was fun to be able to hang out with them after school, but I never took the sport seriously. I did, however, give it my best and at that age, the coach was required to play you- even if you sucked, which I did.

I remember going to an all day volleyball tournament during middle school and, even though I wasn’t the best player, I was still excited to be able to play, even if it was just for a little bit. But, instead of playing me, the coach ended up playing her daughter almost the entire game. I might have played a totally of a minute out of the entire day we were there. I even remember one of my teammates, who was actually really good, sticking up for me by saying, “Why don’t we play Madison instead of tiring us all out by staying in the entire game?” The coach didn’t respond.

I remember holding back the tears until I got into the car where I cried in my mother’s arms for the entire drive home. I was devastated. I knew that I wasn’t good, but to not play an entire tournament? That was like a slap in the face.

So, when volleyball rolled around the next year, I decided that I wasn’t going to play. My mom suggested I tried swimming at our summer’s country club. Now, at this point, I had never swam competitively before, but nothing could be worse than sitting out every single volleyball game. So, I gave it a try.

The first summer I swam, I was terrible. I was in the slowest lane and didn’t really try hard at practice. I made some friends and just stuck to goofing off with them instead of actually swimming.

As the second summer rolled around, I started to take it a little more serious. I actually did the workouts and gave my all at practice. Well, it paid off. I ended up getting 12th place out of 35 girls at the final meet. I dropped four seconds in that meet. Four seconds! For all you swimmers out there, you know that dropping four seconds is almost unheard of.

I started to take swimming seriously after that and swam all through high school. Even though I tried my best during the meets, I know I could have worked harder in practice. But, nonetheless, I loved every second of it.

Let me tell you, there is nothing like hearing the starter goes off and you leave everything you’ve got in the pool. The adrenaline that rushes through your body as you crash through the water is nothing like I’ve ever experienced before.

Watching the summer Olympics makes me miss it. I can hardly believe that it has been almost four years since I have swam, competitively, in a pool. I watch swimmers like Ledecky swim almost flawlessly and take gold and I regret my decision to not further my swimming career. Yes, the practices were grueling and trust me, waking up at 4:30am to make it to morning practice sucked beyond belief, but something about diving into the water to swim the race of a lifetime makes every single practice worth it.

I miss it. Gosh, do I miss it. But even as I write this, I am so thankful for the time I had to swim and the wonderful friendships I made because of it.

Yes, my swimming career may be over, but my love for the sport and the water? That will never go away.

Once a swimmer, always a swimmer. Nothing can take that away from you.