Personal Narrative: Aquahawgs Swim Club

Out of the corner of my eye, I could spy them encouraging me to speed up during my races, their voices ringing in my ears as I surfaced to breathe. In the time not spent in the water, we would converse, discussing preferences and abhorrences, exchanging stories and light banter. We held random competitions in our miniscule team area, involving bottle-flipping contests or bets placed on who would win the ongoing heat. After each race, my coaches would approach and congratulate me, where they informed me of my various errors and techniques to improve my mistakes. Ultimately, they inspired me to overcome pain and difficulty in order to achieve my goals.

My parents tell me that I took to swimming like... a fish takes to water. It is a safe place where I can float free of worries. Driven by passion and dedication, I decided to begin swimming competitively. Competitive swimming requires an intense level of determination and discipline. Forcing myself to get out of my warm bed at 5:30 in the morning to put on a still-slightly-damp swimsuit and stand in 40-degree weather waiting for practice to start. Putting up with limited lane space and irritating swimmers who think they are faster. Making a conscious effort to work on my stroke form, turns, touches, and techniques. The water becomes a whirlpool of injuries, losses, wins, friendships, enemies, and sickness. The water becomes home.

It was sometime around 6:00 p.m. on a Thursday night in the middle of January 2016. There was a swim meet going on and it was just about to start. The teams were warming up and getting ready for the meet that was due to start in the coming hour. I was warmed up and concentrating on the race listening to music in my newly acquired platinum studio beats. The music was loud and the nerves were setting as I walked into the locker room with my friend and teammate. As we passed I said good luck to our teammate who I was racing against in the 200 free style. Then out of know were he pulled my friend to the side and whispered something in his ear. I didn’t hear what was said as I had continued to walk. My friend came over to me and I asked what he had said and he told me. He told me

My name is Alauna Torres and I am a student in the eleventh grade at Inderkum. I work hard to maintain grades in the IB Diploma program and struggle, just as any other student does. Last year, I joined Inderkum’s first swim team in six years. After practicing everyday for two hours, I made a bond with many people on my team. As a team, we couldn 't wait to get out of school, huddle together in the atrium, share food, stories, jokes, and insecurities. We tried to get everyone involved, hoping they wouldn’t feel alone or unimportant. As peers around, our job can’t always be fulfilled if our teachers, staff, and coaches don’t do the same to their students.

I woke up nauseous, too sick to eat. The whole drive there I was praying it would be cancelled. The fear consumed me; I couldn’t move. I just wanted to be home in my warm, comfy bed, instead I was diving into an ice cold pool. After warm-up my coach gave me a pep talk, but I was too nervous to listen. Sometimes I got so nervous I’d throw up, right before my event. To this day I still don’t understand why I got so anxious at swim meets. For the past several years, I have had a love hate relationship with swimming. I always struggled with swimming, and many times I wanted to quit. The time commitment and the physical requirements have always been a little too much for my mind to handle and it all comes to a crescendo when it is time to compete. I often wondered why I continued to put

Once I was there I overheard all the stories about people making their team and how excited they were. Standing in the background, I was too embarrassed to even talk. Eventually I overcame the initial sadness and embarrassment as I remembered the coach's words of advice. I truly did love swimming and I wanted to continue. So I did, with more motivation than ever. In the process I made a commitment to myself, that I would make the team. Later I can to realize not making the team was a blessing in disguise. I moved up to a faster group and train harder than I had before, tremendously improving along the way.

During this positivity mission, one of the most memorable moments occurred at the Niagara LSC Championships. A few newer faces joined us this year, which was a perfect opportunity to get to know some of the swimmers in other levels. Following one of the new swimmer’s races, I turned to him on the bench and complimented his excellent race. I will never forget the smile looking back at me when he asked in disbelief, “You know my name and you watched me?”. My answer was simple, “Of course, you are my teammate”.

When I first joined the North Attleboro Swim Team my freshman year of high school, I did not know what to expect. Prior to joining, I had never swam on a team before so it was a whole new experience to me. As the first week of swim started, I was apprehensive if I wanted to continue since I was not on the same caliber as my other teammates were. The practices were brutal but extremely rewarding, as I strived to prove myself and to my coaches. As my freshman season was under way, a couple of upperclassmen took

Competing in high school athletics was the highlight of my time at Sterling High School, If I could I’d go back and do it all over agin. It allowed me to learn basic life skills, such as time management, self-accountability, leadership, and teamwork. But the most important thing it brought me was a strong support system built up of teammates, coaches, competitors, and officials. My sophomore English teacher once joked that “the girl’s swim team is like a cult” which is pretty close to the truth. From early August to late November twenty girls, a diver or two, and a pair of coaches were inseparable. Together we suffered together through every practice and worked to improve not only ourselves but each other. It was these long hours that shaped

When I was five I joined a swim team, District of Columbia Parks and Recreation (DCPR). At that time every swimmer was Black which was an anomaly even for the chocolate city. Diversity eventually came about three years later when an Asian and a Croasian swimmer joined the team. However, fact that the team was for all intensive purposes made up of Black swimmers is what made this team so special. Swimming is a predominantly white sport. It is a rare to see 95 plus member team of Black children. Of the hundreds of swim teams in our region, only two were made up of Back swimmers. As Black swimmers, we come in all genders, ages, and sizes, but the one thing we collectively hold in common is the color of our skin. We do not look nor could we begin to replicate, like the

Joining a team with kids ranging from five to eighteen, it can be hard. It seemed as if everyone already knew each other. At first, I felt like an outcast, but not for long, once I proved I could swim fast. It took time learning names and getting used to the practices, but in the end my entrance into this group was easy compared to the practices I had to go through. My exit from DCPR was much harder, the coach’s said a few things about us at the award ceremony and then the team gave us a card and best wish in college and off we go. The coaches, swimmers, and the swimmers’ parents had become my second family. We all believed in hard work, having fun, and racing when the time came. Our norms were putting in the effort when swimming and if you did, it would pay off in the meets. Slacking off was never rewarded and always sanctioned. Either the coach or your parent, or both, would yell at you. At 12 I was given the infamous nickname, Snax. It was not necessarily a bad nickname; it came about because I had a habit of always having snacks. We all got nicknames, they were our folkways. It was just part of the culture of being on the team. Our more was practice; it started at 6 every day and had a set

Joining a team with kids ranging from five to eighteen, it can be hard. It seemed as if everyone already knew each other. At first, I felt like an outcast, but not for long, once I proved I could swim fast. It took time learning names and getting used to the practices, but in the end my entrance into this group was easy compared to the practices I had to go through. The coaches, swimmers, the swimmers’ parents became my second family. We all believed in hard work, having fun, and racing when the time came. Our norms were putting in the effort when swimming and if you did, it would pay off in the meets. Slacking off was never rewarded and always sanctioned. Either the coach or your parent, or both, would yell at you, which distracted others, which could ultimately cause you to be kicked out of practice for that day. Although I never got kicked out of practice, I was given the infamous nickname, Snax. It was not necessarily a bad nickname, it came about because I had a habit of always having snacks. We all got nick names from something we had done or just because. My best friend was Yugi, because his younger brother had called him that, my other friend we called squid; it was just part of the culture of being on the

To the coaches that I never had the opportunity to work with, I see how much the younger kids adore and respect you and that is very special. You all have done a fantastic job in creating the next generation of Empire senior swimmers. I’m sure you all would have been great coaches to have.

On the first day of practice I was extremely out of place. I was among athletes who were six-foot and had played high intensity sports before. The first week came as a slap to the face for me because we trained harder than I had ever done in my life. Over the next 3 months of winter training I began to fall into place among the other athletes and to my surprise I was placed in the upperclassmen quad. This boat was predicted to be the fastest boat that we raced so there was a lot of competition for it. Since there were two other upperclassmen that weren’t in the boat my placement in the quad was always being reevaluated to ensure that it had the fastest athletes in it.

By this time I had started to go through puberty and became taller which enabled me to swim faster. The morning group was full of dedicated swimmers who were crazy enough to get up every morning to go jump into a pool and practice. Of course I was no different, but during April of that season I had started to lose my motivation. I began to skip practices and gave my parents excuses, which then they told me to take it easy. After two months of periodic practices, I realized that swimming was an activity that I wanted to do and that I loved, and I decided that I would not allow myself to quit, no matter how hard it became. When the new season started, I started to push myself, trying to keep up to the faster swimmers. I became close with my team mates as people who go through pain together get closer. We started to have more fun together from going out, to having funny conversations in the locker rooms. I also began to do travel meets where we would spend a few days together, eating, sleeping, and swimming. I spent more time out of the pool with my friends and even became romantically involved with one. Now, swimming has become one of the most important things to me, it has been the activity that has the most influence on my life. From my work ethic, sleeping habits, to my choice of friends, all of them are tied to