It doesn’t matter how you became a part of a swim team: whether your mom and dad signed you up, or you begged them to because it was what all of the other kids in your class were doing that summer. Although, now that swimming seems fun and easy, it won't always be like that. There will be a number of times throughout your swimming career that you will want to quit. You might come up with a pros and cons list of why or why not you should quit swimming. It is true it’s not fun to wake up at the crack of dawn for practices every day and go to long meets on the weekends, but in the end all those early mornings, and what you thought were impossible practices, were all worth it.
As you get older, you have to decide whether to continue swimming through high school and maybe even through college. Once you got older, swimming kept getting harder, and now, more often, you think about quitting, but you never do. You stuck with swimming until the very end of college. Congrats you did it, you survived the morning practices, doubles, dry-land, meets, lack of a social life and sleep, and I can't forget the dreaded winter training. Now you are officially a NARP (non athletic regular person). How does that feel? Hopefully great; its kind of like you had accomplished something important with your life.
Always remember to cherish every memory and friendship that you made as a swimmer. Remember how all of your teams, coaches, and teammates changed your life. Don’t forget that you learned discipline, for example, by going to bed early and getting up early or by getting to practice on time. You also learned great eating habits, well, maybe not so much because swimmers can and will eat as much as they want. You learned how to balance sleep, schoolwork, a social life and practice. You learned how to push yourself, sometimes past your limits. You learned how to believe in yourself and how to cheer others on. And most importantly: don’t ever forget how you felt after you finished the race of your lifetime.
Remember these reasons why you fell in love with swimming in the first place, because these are lessons and friends that last a lifetime. And never forget that little girl or boy on the first day of summer swim practice, nervous and afraid. Look where you are now and realize how much you have grown up.
“When you swim, your mind goes blank. It’s just you and the water. That’s it. And that’s why we love it.”
Sincerely,
The child who will soon start her last year of college swimming.
