Midterm Analysis: Swim

In the article “Swimming for Her Life,” by Kristen Lewis, it describes the life of Yusra Mardini. When Yursa was 13 the civil war started. Yusra fled in 2015 when she was 18. Yusra faces many challenges. She faces being a refugee, crossing the Aegean sea and being smuggled into Germany and Greece. When the Civil war started it caused Yusra and Sarah to become refugees and get smuggled into Greece and Germany. They also were crossing the aegean sea when the mortar to their boat stopped and it started to fill with water. Yusra and sarah both hopped out of their boat and and swam for 3.5 hours saving 18 souls. Once Yusra made it to Germany she met a man named Sven Spannekerbs. She swam for him and he immediately recognized her talent for swimming.

The water was an icy shock. It made my muscles tighten as I began my eight lap warm up. Focusing on my arm movements, I struggle to keep up with the others in my lane.

In May of 2015, I ran a Spartan race. A Spartan race is an obstacle course where you try your hardest to finish and push yourself to your limit. My friend, Jess, decided to do one with her brother and wanted to take me. My sister also wanted to join since she already ran two of these races. Since I had my sister by my side, I decided to try it. It was one of the most treacherous and exhilarating times in my life and it all started with climbing over a six foot wall with a giant hill behind it.

　　One song that could describe the African American heritage and culture is Wade In The Water. I feel Like this song tells of the past and history of all enslaved African Americans and what they had to go through to get to freedom. The very few who followed this song and had the gusto to disobey their masters and leave unknowingly, they were risking major beatings and possibly death provoked by the one who owns them. The African Americans have had a tough past and I feel like the song Wade In The Water, along with many other songs about the heritage of African Americans, holds true to the reality of their past and the struggles they had to go through to get where they are now.

The course continued on down the mountain for a brief sprint and came to another obstacle that was a half plastic black tube, but this time we had to run across the tubes. I am pretty sure on Saturday when it was dry, the tubes where set up like another slide, but for safety reasons they flipped the tubes over to much safer side on Sunday due to all the rain. The course not far from the festival area now, made its way to a stream and racers entered the stream and made there way over a metal tube we had to crawl through with the stream water running through it. After we exited the other side of the tubes, we then made our way out of the water and then literally went right back in at the next obstacle which was a slack-line traverse. I watched

In “Six Things You Should Know about Being a Swimmer”, I have changed the 6 things many times. From making it “6 Things You Should Know about Being a Middle School Student” to “6 Things You Should Know about Being a Kid with Diverse Parents”. However, I didn’t really know what 6 things to put about any of these. In the end, I decided to do something that I am really good at, swim. Even doing this was hard. They’re plenty of things that I could say, but then I didn’t know how to put it into words.

I have been in the State College Area High School Marching Band for the past four years. I play the tenor saxophone and I am a mentor to the younger band players by providing help with marching skills. I am a lifeguard and a swim instructor for the State College YMCA. I started to work at the YMCA about a year ago. I am certified in CPR and first aid. While lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons, I have improved on my communication skills and observation skills. Working as a lifeguard, I have to communicate with other lifeguards in order to prevent drownings. As a swim instructor, I also have learned to communicate well with kids and their parents during lessons. I have also volunteered at Juniper Village at Brookline, since February 2015. I have over 250 hours of volunteering at Juniper Village.

With the sun beating against my back, I ran through the narrow path, my breaths heavy and jagged. This was my first time running an obstacle course, and the different stations, from rope climbing to log jumping, had left me exhausted. My squad members had started to notice me struggling, but instead of running past me, they started to shout encouragements and cheer me on. Though I was drained of energy by the time I reached the finish line, I was overflowing with appreciation. My squad members, whom I met just four days before, had all teamed up to support me.

The course looped around and back towards the festival area and up next was the rope climb, I opted to do the climb with gloves off and I am happy I made that decision because I am not sure I could have climbed the rope with cold weather gloves on. A short distance ahead came the Hercules Hoist, which I always enjoy because it’s typically the easiest obstacle for me on a Spartan course.

The course was about five miles and a total of twenty five obstacles and a nice trail run with challenging obstacles. The race director clearly likes walls and angled wall climbing obstacles as the course had a bunch of them throughout, but all the obstacles were well built and the course was well thought out.

The documentary “Swimming South” premiered on 29 January 2017, would have sent a shock through many of the viewers of channel 9’s weekly 60 minutes program. As it describes a threat that could cost the Australian tourism industry billions, the Irukandji jellyfish. The documentary makes the jellyfish out to be an alien type creature, doing well to capture the viewers’ attention on the matter, specifically showing examples of the deadliness of the jellyfish to provide fear in the minds of people.

For rowing, or any sport in general, it is important for a coach to have a plan and structure no matter what the task is at hand. When determining what goes into a practice, as a coach, I would sit down Sunday night and think about the overall theme that I would want my athletes to focus on that week during practice. I would think of the drills, how long I want the longer endurance or sprint pieces to be, and determine what the boat lineup will be. The beginning of the practice on the water would be drill work and technique focused, while the remaining part of practice would be dedicated to the endurance or sprint work. After figuring out what I want each practice to entail, I would send an email out to my rowers outlining what the week will

Near the end of the course was a second challenge, that had racers drag a heavy object via a harness and in addition carry two kettle bells, this one actually kicked my but a little. The course had a section that was near an old railroad and racers had spent time on this section racing on both train tracks and climbing in, through, and out of several train cars, which again I enjoyed because it was different and the train cars were pretty cool.

There are many things you need to watch out for during the Summer. At the beach, rip currents are dangerous because they pull you far away from the shore and keep you there. There is also a lot of bacteria in the water that can be deadly. "The best place to swim is in a chlorinated pool," says Dennis Maki. Shark attacks are fatal but very rare. There is only a 1 in 11.5 million chance of being attacked by a shark. There are many ways to prevent being attacked by a shark such as not swimming while bleeding.

Watching the screen, many children and adults are glued to the swimmers that race each other in the Olympics. The swimmers are young and strong, but many do not know who these swimmers are. Adding on to what they do not know contains the history of swimming in the glorified Olympics. The backstory of this sporting event shows the progression and improvement of swimming because swimming evolved through the Olympics. This includes the beginning, improvement, and modern Olympic swimming sport.