Personal Narrative: My Path With Swimming

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.

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

Meeting younger swimmers during multi level practices and cheering them on by name during team relays has allowed to share my positivity to all.

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

During the spring of 2015, I missed all of the time cuts to make Speedo Sectionals, forcing me to compete in a much slower meet at the end of the season. There are few things I have experienced that are more crushing than trying my hardest and falling short of my goal. Despite the heavy disappointment, I used the opportunity to harden my resolve and use my strengths to my greatest advantage. Along with my coach’s help, I used my ability to think strategically and hone my technique through focus on the smallest details from how I would approach a swim mentally to how I would warm up. My coach had many important and useful suggestions and lessons from his past experience that required me to be an active learner that could apply his information.

It wasn’t till I came on my first visit to Jewell that I was told that I actually could swim for Jewell if I wanted to, and I did want to. Coach Gole told me that if I wanted to swim for Jewell that I should probably join a club team and recommended two that were in the area, Tsunami and Club North. Two of my three high school coaches also coached on Club North, the third coach was responsible for keeping track of people who wanted to join the team and getting them into the correct place, and many of the fastest kids on my team swam for Club North, which made it a no brainer for me to request to join that team. Since my assistant coach was in charge of the waiting list, se pulled some strings and got me on Club North in November, shortly after high school season ended. At first I was overwhelmed by the difficulty of the practices compared to what I was used to, and I felt like the slowest one in my group. It took longer than it should have for me to get back into shape because I was also the manager of the girls’ high school team and I often missed practice due to the fact that I was at the girls’ meets. I paid little attention to that fact because I loved being the manager. It was so much fun to be a part of the girls’ team, to get to know each and every girl and to watch them

The journey of competitive swimming started at the age of eight for my local `neighborhood team. I exhibited great potential for the future, for I won nearly all my races. This seemed like the sport

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

JP: What did you think when you emerged as the leader in the final phase of the race?

I wake up barely dawn, when the early morning is still unpleasantly chilly and most of my peers are comfortably cuddled in their blankets. I, on the other hand, will dive into the pool. My weary limbs urging me to go back to bed, but my ambitious heart encouraging me to move forward. I keep going, training, and racing for the next two and a half hour; everyday, until my arms are too tired to lift my aching body out of the pool. Some days were easy. I had motivation and full of energy. Others, were much more difficult and I had to improvise, adapt, and overcome.

Towards the end of summer my parents- who are the president and secretary of my swim booster club- told me that we’d be getting a new coach for the high school season. I was a little uncomfortable with the idea of a new coach. When summer ended and school started we met our new coach and started practices. We even had optional morning practices as well as afternoon practices and voluntary morning weightlifting. I was putting in at least 3 hours of work every

My swim coach is a passionate, tough man, so the day I needed to inform him I would miss swim finals for my Standard Aptitude Test, I braced myself for his response.

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