College Swimming Saved My Life
Upon graduating from college this May, I have found myself reflecting on what it meant to me to be in school over the past four years. Some of my close friends and teammates are preparing to go back to college this year, and I’m so excited for them, but also a little jealous. I would love to go back, get back into the routine of things that comes along with being a student and get back into the pool with the greatest people I have ever met. In fact, currently, I am counting down the days until our beloved Alumni meet (October 2nd).
Being a collegiate athlete was not something I was seriously considering when I was approaching the idea of attending college. I toured a few schools here and there, but ultimately my junior year of high school, after riding the high of my best swim season so far in my lifetime, I started reaching out to coaches at some Division III programs around the Midwest.
When I first toured at Luther College, I was shown around campus by a swimmer. We chatted endlessly about how she balanced school and athletics while diving in and out of buildings. She was one of the best teammates I ever met in my lifetime as a swimmer. I met more people on the team later that day and drove away from campus while feeling the happiest I had ever felt. My mom took note of that and knew that I would be committing to Luther instantaneously when it came time to make my decisions the following year.
Flash forward to the start of college, it felt so comfortable to walk on campus, and in the college’s only cafeteria, to know that I had a built-in group of friendships that will last a lifetime. The people I met on my college’s swim team are some of the most supportive and amazing people I have ever met.
Little did I know, that I would need to lean so much on a lot of these relationships later in my college career.
I have suffered from anxiety and low-self esteem issues for most of my life. Swimming is what helped with that. All until catastrophe struck.
My sophomore year in college was fairly difficult. Although I was making great friends both inside and outside the swim team and doing fairly well in my classes, I had noticed that my performance during my swim practices was starting to suffer…tremendously.
I kept swimming under the mindset that “pain is just weakness leaving the body” and that I couldn’t be in more pain than everyone else around me. Turns out, I was in over my head. I had an ultrasound done on my shoulders and found out that I had torn my left rotator cuff and my right biceps tendon. Woah.
My junior year was spent as a student coach on the pool deck watching everyone I loved and cared about doing the one thing I loved most. I heard teammates complain about hard practices and returned to my dorm room in tears every night thinking to myself, how could they be so ungrateful? Don’t think know I would literally kill to attend a practice and swim right now?
The injury did no good for my previous anxiety and self-esteem issues. I was worried constantly about my return to swimming my senior year and how I would be able to keep up with everyone else. (Spoiler alert: I really had nothing to worry about.) I talked to my coach about all my worries, and he was super reassuring. So were my teammates as well. But, I hadn’t realized this at the moment. Most of my reassurance for myself came from the pain meds I was prescribed and the combination of studying too much and drinking even more on the weekends. I avoided the people I used to spend most of my time with because I was embarrassed of how I was handling not being able to swim by unconsciously gripping to bottles of alcohol and diving into my studies and isolating myself from virtually the rest of the world. I had a problem but no idea how to face it.
My problems with college life without swimming did not end there. I ended my first ever relationship during the Fall of that year. I had such poor self-esteem that I was talking to boys that would only do more damage to my lesser mental state.
The best thing that happened to me was getting cleared to swim again in November. I quickly became avid on exercising and getting some laps done in the pool. Every day, I would try to plan time to get on either the elliptical or the exercise bike to keep up with my cardiovascular fitness. I was so determined to get back into shape, but my bad habits with cradling my alcohol bottles and crappy and meaningless relationships still continued on.
In January 2020, I was sexually assaulted by someone I had considered a friend. I felt so lost and confused mentally. I didn’t talk to anyone, tell anyone what happened, but still continued to shut myself off from the rest of the world. I frequently thought about self-harm. The only thing holding me together was the twice a week pool workouts that my coach would arrange for me. In fact, the morning after the assault, I rallied myself out of my dorm room and spent two hours rotating the wheels on the stationary bike, internally wrestling the thoughts circling around my mind.
Going home during my junior year, like the rest of the world, was equally tough. I couldn’t see some of the closest friends I had managed to keep, and I was really alone with my own thoughts. Since I had been working on maintaining my strength in the pool, I got a gym membership, donned my mask while walking into the gym’s facility and started swimming five days a week (short workouts) in order to get in shape for my upcoming senior year. The more time I spent swimming, the easier it was for me to turn my life around. I was no longer nursing alcohol bottles, no longer entertaining crappy college guys and started taking much better care of my physical and mental well-being.
Stepping on the pool deck for my first time, ready for an official practice, since my sophomore year was one of the most exciting moments of my senior year. I was so excited to swim with my teammates, both new and old. I managed to hold my own with some of the boys in my practice group and held my own in meets as well. The support I received from my coaches, teammates and the whole swim and dive family was what I needed in order to finish out my college career. I was still suffering from anxiety, but swimming is what helped me bottle up those fears and manage to stay on track.
Stepping back into the college world after the onset of the pandemic was still another problem to tackle. I missed home so much and more often than not, my homesickness and mild depression symptoms had me calling home crying nearly every day. However, the schedule I had forming around my swim practices and swim meets (and of course the life I led as a student) made that crazy year so much more manageable.
All in all, I am super happy that I have some pretty amazing experiences to look back on when it comes to my collegiate career. I was on an amazing swim team, met some equally amazing teammates and grew into becoming my own person. I learned just how much I need physical activity in my life in order to feel sane and am just as eager and excited for the rest of my life to come.
Instead of cradling the alcohol bottles and diving into meaningless relationships or personally harming myself, I’ll be taking trips to the nearest pool when life seems to get a little too hard.
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