Personal Narrative On Regional Swim

Being on my school’s diving team has had its ups and downs but one the biggest setbacks I went through while on the team was my freshman year when I got a concussion. I was doing a simple reverse dive I under rotated enough that when I hit the water, it pushed my head into my knee. I am unsure whether or not I blacked out but all I remembered was climbing out of the pool dizzy and confused. I went to a doctor and found out I had a concussion. Having a concussion was a big setback in itself, but what made it the worst was that the conference meet was coming up in about a week. I had to rest for the remainder of the week and was cleared to practice again the next Monday. Because of the whole situation I felt like quitting all together. I only had three days of practice before the conference meet and had nothing prepared. I did not think it would be possible for me to practice all eleven of my dives that I needed to do at the meet in time. Then I remembered my goal for the season: to earn my varsity letter. I had not achieved my goal yet and the conference meet was my last chance to do so. I was not about to

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

Later in the day, my wife pointed out to me that there was a picture of me in the newspaper, vomiting. When I saw that picture for the first time my stomach turned. I thought I was going to throw up again. It was incredibly humiliating and I knew I couldn’t let the people who looked up to me the most see me like that. Not my teammates, my peers, my wife, my son, nobody. It was pathetic. With that picture out in the media, I was already focused on tomorrow’s practice. I was determined to come back the next day, playing harder than ever, and proving everyone wrong.

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.

My first practice was horrendous, my entire body was sore and I was light-headed, but I did not give up there. After the first week of practice, the coach had a list of who was going to be on A team or B team, coach Safarik started going through the list. I was really nervous, I was sweating, my right foot was shaking, and my whole upper body was paralyzed. Then it happened, I heard my name called out, “Oscar Juan, A team”, coach Safarik shouted. I was happy as could be, but I could not show my emotions just yet.

The 200 freestyle at WPIALS, the championship race for my section in highschool, did not turn out the way I wanted it to do. After practicing for three months I only dropped half a second in my race, finishing at 1:49:56, which is good in shorter races but I know I had more in me. The next week I could not stop thinking about what went wrong in my race. That weekend I swam a meet for my club team and went a 1:46:98, by learning from my failure I was able to get back up and succeed. Now, I know that all my hard work and failures will lead me to any goal that I set for

It was important for me to keep up the positivity at practice even though I had been feeling negative. Despite my feelings for the sport, I was sacrificing everything for my team so we could stay together. We had awesome practices where we got so much done and then we also had practices that weren’t so great. But each time, my girls pushed through. And then, soon enough November was here and it was competition season. We were doing full-outs, the whole routine, 10 to 20 times every practice and then fixing and cleaning up our technique in between each full-out. Each time, the full-outs became harder as we were using more and more energy. But still, we pushed through. The night before, I went to bed early to prepare my body for what I knew was going to be a very long day ahead of me. Sometime in the middle of the night, I received a text saying our competition had been cancelled due to the host school having a lockdown the previous day. We had to wait. After all of the preparation we had had, we were forced to wait all of Thanksgiving break and then compete. So, we went on Thanksgiving break and I tried my hardest to get my mind where it needed to be for the competition. When we returned from break, we had exactly one practice left before our competition. As soon as everyone arrived, I could already tell something was off. And that is when we were told that one of our girls wouldn’t be competing with us due to grades. I don’t think I have ever felt so frustrated before. I was in complete shock that she had done this to us. But we had become that team that could bounce back from anything and we didn’t let this get us down. We rearranged the routine. The day finally came for us to compete. All day, I was anxious, wanting my team to do amazing but also to win. When we got to the school, everyone’s nerves were on but I knew we had it. I could feel it in my skin. I could feel myself

My life was changed this summer after my winter swim team received unexpected news. We were told that we would no longer be able to practice at the same pool as before, leaving all of the swimmers without a place to practice. Unfortunately, this meant that my team, the Tiger Sharks, would no longer exist. I was devastated and now forced to bring myself upon a new team with unfamiliar faces. On my new team the head coach, Coach Bill, was able to assist me in making this transition easier and he was also exceptionally inviting to me and the other new swimmers. His unique training allowed me to immensely improve my swimming.

I thought to myself “What if I’m not good enough? What if I dislike it as much as I remember? What will the Lyman Hall kids be like?” These worries only lasted until I opened the front door of the school, because I was greeted by many familiar faces. I shook hands with the captains, Victor Jacome and Robbie Driscoll, whom I had known from my previous swim team. The first practice was very difficult; in years past, I would have considered it to be very mild and easy, but I hadn’t tried to swim in a competitive manner in a very long time, and even after a couple laps, every muscle in my body ached. This was a very foreign feeling to me because I hadn’t felt this way since I first started swimming when I was 10 years old. At the peak of my conditioning when I was around 14 years old, I could swim a full mile, or 66 laps at a competitive pace, without stopping, and I would feel fine. However, like riding a bike, there is muscle memory involved, and after a few more practices swimming started to feel more like I remembered it. Despite this, some things still felt different; I changed a lot in 2 years: I grew from around 5’8 to 6’1 and went from very scrawny to somewhat a normal amount of muscle. These physical changes were beneficial to my swimming of course, and I felt myself traveling farther in the water with each stroke, therefore being more efficient. When swimming

It was a cold October day. The closer I came to the fogged up windows, the faster my heart would beat making my breath quicken. I step into the locker room to prepare for the pool. As soon as I step out the humidity hit me. I’ve been scoping out the competition for a few hours now and they are good. I say to my friend” I sure hope that I don’t have to race against them” . Then my name gets called and what do you know I have to go against a state winner and 6 more excellent swimmers. Suddenly my number gets called.”Swimmer's step up!”.My heart racing. Adrenalin pumping. Me trying to calm down so I can actually go. “ Swimmers ready?”...The whistle blows.

In 2015 at the OSSAA swimming regionals meet, I went into it not thinking I had any chance at making it to the state level of competition. Once I had swam and placed very well I thought that there was actually a chance in me making it to the next level, which was something I had never seriously considered happening before then. I went all weekend without knowing if I had made it and then Sunday afternoon I found out that I had barely missed making it. This sparked something in me that motivated me to do everything I could to make it the next year, like it was a challenge to myself to make it that very next year. Throughout that next year lots of things changed in my daily life. I started giving all of my effort at every practice. Over the summer

I felt like a failure when I crashed my brand new car against a wall [Whoops]. I failed miserably at a Swim Meet too. Now before you think it's "just swimming," you have to understand, I LOVED swimming. It was my life and my joy, I swam almost 6-7 hours a day and loved the Butterfly Stroke. That swim meet one was tough; I threw out my shoulder swimming butterfly at my first Varsity Meet. I was in first place too, but throwing out my shoulder and obviously I lost that within seconds. Mind you, I was also starting to be scouted by West Point at UCLA [West Point wanted female swimmers to compete against the Navy, which is kinda cool] and I was supposed to report my swim times to them (I was a sophomore in High School, but my butterfly time was that of a College Freshman). After throwing out my shoulder during the race, I was out for that season and lost my fly time for years. But, that race? I finished it. At least in the grand scheme of things, I can say I swam butterfly one-armed and got last place. I tucked the injured arm by my torso, swam the last two laps with one arm at a

A lake is very different from a pool. It is much more dangerous. You are in the control and at the mercy of mother nature, and you should just hope and pray that she is happy on that given day. And unless all hell breaks loose, the race will go on. That is the nature of open water swimming, you take what you get. The year before for example, the race went ahead as planned during a heavy rainstorm and the air temperature was under ten degrees. The water would have felt even colder on that day as well, as it does tend to suck out any and all heat that is left in your body if it is in a frosty mood. One could see why is was worried. My teammates had participated in that race, and boy did they have some stories to tell. I am still not sure whether or not they were exaggerating the details, but they frightened me. At the same time, my coach also wanted me to do it and entered me into the race. Now I had to prepare for something that I did not ask to do or even want to do. I felt comfortable in the pool, and did not want to test my luck in a lake. Since I was doing it, I trained super hard for a whole swim season. It is not like I didn’t train hard beforehand, but there was more of a purpose this time. I wasn’t just going to improve my times, I was going to accomplish something that I had never done. The race being scheduled in September, I had to make sure that my body stayed in the proper condition to swim a race of this magnitude. I wanted to be able to complete it, not just start it. But training by yourself is much harder, and it took a lot of will power to push myself to do

I was trying to get to sectionals and that was a big goal. After setting my goals I had to prepare to practice to get to sectionals. Everyday my team Carolina Aquatic Team has practice, so I had to go every day if I wanted to achieve my goal. Somedays I got tired of it and did not want to go. But then I thought about what I had done this for and kept pushing. During the months leading up to this swim meet I kept trying even with school and keeping good grades. There were 8 meets during the season and I came closer to the Sectional cuts every meet. While some meets would go better than others I knew I would get the times if I kept trying. After some time I finally got my Sectional cuts, and I got nine of them. By March, I was ready for Sectionals and all the fast swimmers to come.

Even though I would have been under so much pressure, I was so confident in myself that I wasn't even nervous. I don't remember anything that happened during the race but when I looked at my time, it was my personal best. The list of the names of the people who qualified had come up on the electric bulletin board. I was in 4th place. I had just half an hour to get ready for the finals, which was a tough schedule for me because I was exhausted. I became very nervous. Adding on to that, my coach kept saying that it would be nice if I came in third place, pressuring me even more. I made good use of that half an hour, and I was completely ready for my last race of the day. I looked around and saw the members I was about to compete with. I could feel the tension building up around me. I heard the whistle blow and thinking that I have nothing to lose, I dove into the water. Again, my mind was blank during the race. As soon as I hit the touchpad, I glanced at the electronic screen and saw that I had come in third place with my personal best by almost two seconds. I also had only 0.6 seconds until the nationals and I even qualified for the Tokai area