This is it

After sixteen years of competitive swimming, my career is almost over.

As of this writing, it is the summer before my fifth and last year of college — and my last year of competitive swimming. A part of me is dreading it: I am not ready to move on from a sport I’ve been doing for most of my life, and I am definitely not ready to graduate. However, there is a part of me that is looking forward to it. Excitement is always my primary emotion when going into a swim season, but I would be lying if I didn’t say I was extra excited about the prospect of being done once I finish my last race in February. Swimming is such a tough sport — mentally and physically — and I have poured so much of myself into it over the years. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a tumultuous relationship with swimming, so I am getting ready to close this chapter of my life and start a new one. But I’m not ready yet. Knowing I have another season ahead of me, and the last one at that, has me wanting to soak in and enjoy every moment.

Thus, “A Swimming Saga” was born. As a writer, I knew I wanted to document this last year in some way, and, as a user of Medium, I knew that this platform was the right place to share my journey. Since joining this community last year, it has been nothing but supportive and welcoming, and I know that someone on here will find value in my words. Not only do I plan to talk about what is currently happening in my life with regards to swimming, but I also want to reflect on my swimming career as a whole. I want to walk away in the spring being content with what I’ve done in this sport and what it has given me. I already feel like I’m on the path towards that goal, but I know that this blog will help me reach it. Maybe it can help other people in the same boat, too.

Like most swimmers, my athletic career began on my summer swim team, located right down the street from my house. I’ve always loved to be in the water, so I latched on to the sport like a barnacle on the side of a whale. After seeing how much I loved to swim, my parents signed me up for a winter swim team nearby. Now, not only were my summers dictated by chlorine scented hair, but my winters were, too. Racing was so much fun and my coaches discovered that I had a natural talent for breaststroke. I started getting private swim lessons from one of the coaches to work on my technique and my times quickly began to drop. My freestyle and backstroke improved dramatically in those sessions, but my butterfly was a lost cause. It still is, but I’m slightly better at hiding it.

My career stayed on that upward trajectory for several years. I switched swim clubs, and got even faster. I was learning how to train harder and smarter, and I even had dreams of making an Olympic Trials cut. My best season up to that point was when I was fourteen years old. I had made Junior Olympics (not as cool as it sounds) in several events, finaled in most of them, and went best times every time I dove in the pool. I was so excited to swim for my high school team the next year. I had so many hopes for what the next four years would look like, but it ended up taking a drastically different turn.

I don’t really know where to start when it comes to talking about my high school experience. It is all so muddled. I’m not even entirely sure what happened because one year, I was riding the wave, and the next, I was in free-fall towards rock bottom. The simplest explanation for what happened is the fact that I began to feel like I wasn’t good enough. It started out with just the smallest of doubts in myself, but it caught like a wildfire and consumed every aspect of my life. Including swimming: something that I once loved, something that once brought me peace. I’m honestly surprised that I decided to swim in college, but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. When I’m knocked down, I get back on my feet. I think there was also a small part of myself that still harbored joy for the sport. As long as some of that childhood bliss remained, I wasn’t going to walk away.

I entered college in the fall of 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was no regular swim season, so all we did was train. Without the pressure of racing every weekend, I slowly started to recover my love for being in the water. I looked forward to going to practice every day: I had new coaches, new teammates, a new training regime, and I was soaking it all in. We had a few intrasquad meets in the fall and spring, and I crushed some of my best times that I hadn’t touched in years. Ever since I was fourteen years old, I’ve wanted to break a minute in the 100 backstroke, and I finally did it that year. I remember touching the wall, looking up at the scoreboard, and screaming with elation. I wasn’t expecting to go that fast, but it is a testament to how important a factor joy is on athletic performance. That season was the best season of my career.

My sophomore season was characterized by a lower-back injury that prevented me from swimming every stroke besides freestyle. In December of 2021, I couldn’t feel the bottom of my spine, so I had to go to the emergency room to get an MRI. They found four bulges, but, apparently, none of them were serious enough to be causing my symptoms. I went to a physical therapist, a chiropractor, the sports doctors at my school, and they all helped me develop a routine to do before working out that helps prevent a flare-up. The doctors ended up saying my pain was caused by anxiety, but I don’t believe that. After all, some of the worst pain I’ve had occurred when my anxiety was at its lowest.

We got a new coaching staff right before the start of my junior year. Even though I loved them, there was a long adjustment period. I was finally an upperclassman and my back was in much better shape, so I put a lot of pressure on myself to be a leader and to finally beat my best times from freshmen year. You can probably guess how the season actually went: I self-imploded. I am still ashamed by how I acted at my championship meet. It’s not that I swam badly, I just didn’t meet the expectations I had set for myself, and I had developed the terrible habit of measuring my self-worth on how fast I swam. If I didn’t go a best time, I would break down in tears with no regards for my teammates, coaches, or the people around me. I was very selfish that weekend. I spent the next few months digging myself out of that dark place, and I knew going into my senior year that I didn’t want it to happen again.

To my surprise, I was appointed a captain that fall. It felt so good to have my teammates nominate me into that role, even after everything that happened at the end of the prior year. I wanted to make them proud. Unfortunately, there were a lot of politic disagreements among the senior class that consumed most of my energy. Despite all of this, I’m really happy with the way I swam. I wasn’t in great physical shape because of some new shoulder pain in the fall and a lower-back flare-up in the winter, but I was right on my best times and swam my races pretty well strategically. The thing I’m proudest of, though, is the change in my mentality around swimming. After the tragedy of my junior year, I decided to go back to therapy on a consistent basis. We did a lot of work on my mindset towards the sport and on my identity as a swimmer. Instead of swimming being something that defines me, it is just something I do because I love it. It’s a side dish, not the main course.

Something that helped me move away from my swimming identity was putting a newfound emphasis on my academic identity. I’ve changed my major(s) many times, but I’ve finally landed on a combination that suits me: astrophysics and creative writing with a minor in applied mathematics. As a result, I need to take a fifth year to complete all of my required classes, but I’m actually really happy I have another year. Last year didn’t feel like the end. I felt like I was just getting started. My mental and physical health are in the best spots they’ve been in a long time and I feel more secure in who I am and what I want to do in the future. Most importantly, though, I’ve finally recovered the love for swimming. I no longer feel this crippling pressure to perform to a certain standard. I am going to give this next year my best effort and am so excited to see what happens.

I might be in a good place now, but I still struggle to come to terms with my past in regards to swimming, especially when I think about my teenage self. I want to fill this blog with the good while also attempting to tease something worthwhile out of the bad. I am much, much more than a swimmer, but I still want to look back fondly on my career. I want my seven-year-old self to be proud. I think she would be, even if I were to quit now. But I’m not done yet.

Here’s to living in the moment. Here’s to having fun. Here’s to doing the best I can and being proud of what I accomplish in this next year and what I have accomplished these past sixteen years. Here’s to the end of my swimming saga.