Personal Narrative: My Path With Swimming

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.

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

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

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”.

Applicant #4 What the North Attleboro Swim Team Means to Me 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

Hitting the wall, I pushed off the wall and swam breaststroke. Here, my legs gave in and began power my stroke. I seemed to be shooting forward, heading towards the wall. My body was beginning to feel like an oven, and my limbs grew numb, but I kept pushing forward. It was time for me to finish this

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

I wouldn’t say much in practice but what I did say seemed to amuse them, to my delight. Over the months, we would form a friendship and a bond that I never would have thought possible. I would be invited to their “group activities”, and eventually I would be swimming in the same lane with them. As my confidence grew, so did my skill. Day by day, it seemed like I was passing more and more swimmers, as well as leading lanes. The time eventually came for the younger children to be moved into the senior group. I hadn’t given it much thought until I heard that my new friends were to be moved up but I was under heavy consideration. I was determined like never before, meet after meet, best time after best time, I treated every swim like my life depended on it. On the last day of the season, the senior roster was posted. At the very bottom of the list I saw the name: Josh Poland. That was over 5 years ago; today I am in the fastest lane of the senior group, captain of the high school team (with 11 consecutive wins under its belt), and I have signed to swim at my dream college. All of these are good accomplishments, but I am the true champion in that is have won 4 lifelong

Even though I had swum on a relay with my lane mates at the MHSAA D1 State Championship Meet the season before, come in seventh place out of the entire state with them on that relay, and shattered the Varsity record with them, I still doubted my ability to make the required pace times. “Get ready girls, this should be a super fun set!” Our coach jokingly shouted. In my mind, I was writing my will, dedicating the set we were about to swim—which I thought was going to be my last—to my teammates, and preparing for the absolute

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.

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.

When practice ended, I slowly got changed and said goodbye to all my teammates. It was really hard to leave them, especially since I had played with some of them for almost 4 years. After I had said all of my goodbyes, I turned to my coach, whom I had known for the entire time I had played water polo, about 5 years. I took a picture with him, and started to turn away. As I was walking away, he called after me to come back. When I faced him again, he told me to remember this club, and to represent them well at my new one.

Since I started the swim team at age five, these were the easiest and most common strokes, so of course I chose them. After multiple meets over the years, my coach came up to me and informed me that since I was comfortable with freestyle, she was going to bump me from 50 meters to 100 meters. This made my stomach knot up. I didn’t like a challenge or change, especially when it came to something this important to me. After that nerve wracking event, I was surprised and proud of myself for completing it.