From the time I was about 4 years old, I always played sports. I was the girl in junior high on 5 different sports teams always trying to juggle my activities and find time in the day to do everything. Once I got to high school, I had to pick one. For whatever crazy reasons I had, I chose the sport of swimming. I swam pretty seriously all through high school and it took up most of my time. We had doubles nearly every day all year long and meets almost every weekend. I had practice every day after school for about 3 hours. I lived the life of a typical student athlete. I went to school, went to practice, came home around 6 or 7, showered, ate, did a few hours of homework and went to sleep because I was too physically exhausted to do much more than that.

My sport was my life. It was my main priority. Of course, school always came first, but high school was relatively easy. I spent most of my time thinking about swimming. I thought about what we were going to do at practice that day, when our next meet was, what I wanted my times to be, my goals for the end of the season, everything. I was always training, always thinking about the sport, always pushing towards new goals. I found a lot of value in life through my sport. It was always what was most important to me from a young age and I never really knew anything different. I still did other things. I had a lot of friends and was involved in a lot of clubs at school. I never missed a football game or school dance and grades were always important to me. But if someone asked me to describe myself to them, the first thing I would think of was that I was a swimmer before any of those other things.

Then, around junior year it was that time to start thinking about college decisions. Nearly everyone on my swim team that swam year round continued in college. I felt the pressure to continue my swimming career for sure, but I knew it was ultimately up to me to choose what I wanted to do. I was a fast swimmer, but I was certainly no Missy Franklin. I had a lot of really good offers to swim at really nice schools, but they weren’t my dream schools. I always knew from a young age I wanted to go to a big school. I wanted to go to big sporting events and have a big campus where I would always be meeting new people every day and have the sense of school pride that comes with attending a large school. The schools I was looking to swim at were not like that. I also wanted to do other things. I wanted the chance to study abroad, or join clubs, or write for the school newspaper. I wanted to do a lot of different things that I knew I would not have the time to do if I was swimming all day every day.

When it came down to it, the school that felt most like home to me was not one that I would be able to swim at. My sport had been my whole life since I could remember. The fact that I wasn’t going to be doing it anymore felt weird, but I was still excited for all of the other opportunities I could now have. When I made this decision to quit swimming and go to a big school, I definitely got some critiques. People said I was crazy for passing up scholarship money. They said that I was just going to a big school so that I could party every night of the week. They said I was crazy for passing up my opportunities.

Well I think I would be crazy if I passed up the opportunity I have now. I am at a B1G school with unlimited possibilities. I’m a part of clubs, I do intramural sports, I have time to actually study and get good grades. I didn’t do it so I can party on Tuesdays, and yes I know it is a costly investment. I did it so that I can finally do other things with my time instead of only ever knowing my sport. I did it so that when people ask me to describe myself, I can say something more than “a swimmer”. I did it so that I can go to B1G football games, and study abroad in Europe for my major, and meet new friends everywhere I go that aren’t just other swimmers. I did it so that I have time to do the things that I want for once. I loved swimming while I did it and I wouldn’t change one thing about all of the time and effort I put into it. It’s just finally time for me to do other things and have new experiences other than what I’ve been used to doing the past 14 years of my life, and I have no regrets about it whatsoever. I am happy with my decision and I don’t care what the critics have to say about my decision because it wasn’t theirs to make.

I’ll always thank my sport for shaping me into who I am today. It is weird to think that for once in my life, I can’t really consider myself a true athlete, but it’s okay because now I can define myself in so many other ways and I’m really happy with that.