To my fellow swimmer,
You are in for the ride of your life, but my first piece of advice is: don’t quit. You probably aren’t thinking that now while swimming dolphin dive 25s, doing backstroke on your stomach, and playing sharks and minnows. But pretty soon, your whole world will revolve around the pool.
The google marks won’t go away. Your sweat will smell like chlorine. Your hair will always be wet and freeze in the December cold immediately when you walk outside. You will be tired from waking up at 5am to go to dryland practice. Your weekends will be filled with extra practices and swim meets instead of making plans with your friends to go to the movies or have pajama parties.
You will have coaches that scream “Kick your goddamn legs!” on the first day of practice. And after that you will cry and tell your mom “I want to switch teams! I can’t do this anymore!” But she won’t let you because she knows it is what’s best. And your coach does too.
People will ask you “Why do you swim?” or “Do you love it?” after you tell them the “horror” stories about the day before. And most likely, you will not know the answer off the top of your head. Yet, you will have gone all these years persisting, determined to continue.
Why? It is not simply because you have been doing it for so long, but rather it has become a part of who you are, your lifestyle. Because, despite what your coaches say, despite how much you beg your parents to take you out of that freezing cold water, you learned to love it.
Swimming steals your heart. One moment, you’ll be mad at your coach for putting you in this event or making you get into 50-degree water (when you really shouldn’t have) and suddenly you’ll be chuckling at “inside” jokes that you made at dry-land or playing card games on the pool deck for hours.
You will cry because you made your first regional cut or because you didn’t qualify for something you have been working on for years. You will laugh when your best friend tells a funny joke in between the set or because your coach just told you you’ll be swimming 10 200s for time. One day, you’ll be frustrated that someone passed you in the lane. The next day, you’ll be the one passing others.
One day, you will realize that the best feeling is when you break the surface during your first race of the day. The silent world underneath transforms into reality and all that you’ve learned kicks into gear. You hear your coaches, your teammates, and your parents all yelling in one thunderous roar. And despite your lack of energy, their screaming propels you forward even more.
You’ll learn that you would give anything to have your coach be your life coach. You will learn that he/she cares more about you than you do. You will learn to trust them, no matter how much you don’t want to believe them, because they are right 95% of the time. They truly know what’s best for you, inside and outside the water.
You’ll learn that, along with your coaches, your biggest fans are also your parents. They will sit through humid 90 degree meets (sometimes in direct sunlight) that last from four to eight hours to see you swim a total of five minutes. They’re the ones that drive you to and from practice, whether its dusk or dawn. And you’ll learn that they are the ones who have been there from your first race to your last.
You will also learn that you will have to make choices. Whether it’s skipping out on the next set or waiting to get surgery after the season, these decisions not only impact your physical well-being, but your mental capacity. Your toughness is determined by your ability to withstand the odds.
The black lines at the bottom of the pool will never change. But you will.
There is an unspoken beauty in the sport. In moments of frustration and fatigue, your relationship with the water, a love that can only be expressed as hatred during these times, grows. And you, too, as an individual will grow.
Your hard work, dedication, and sacrifice after all these years will have paid off even if you miss the state qualification cut by :10 seconds. Instead, you will have become a leader, a successful athlete, despite your failures and mistakes, because you haven’t quit, you haven’t given up on one of the hardest feats you will ever take on in your lifetime.
It’s important to remember: Life isn’t about the competition. While your success as a swimmer is a defining moment in your career the character that you have built from spending all those hours in the pool, training and practicing for something as small as a 50 free, that character is ultimately the persona that you will carry with you for the rest of your life.
So, swim for you. Swim for the fun 50s that happen every once in a while. Swim because you once fell in love with the water. Swim because soon you will miss it more than you will ever imagine.
Sincerely,
A Retired Swimmer
