Last night, I had the privilege to be at another high school
swim meet. For the second year in a row,
I have helped coach an inner-city swim and dive team, and it has been such a
joy. Yesterday, we had a swim meet
against two other inner-city teams in the city, and it gave us an opportunity
to swim all of our less-experienced athletes who don’t get much swim time in
the more competitive meets. And let me
tell you, they did a great job.
For many of them, this past month has been completely new to
them. Most of these less-experienced
athletes had never swum a lap in their life, and now they are swimming over 4000
yards a day. Talk about a challenge, but
they have stepped up to this challenge with such a positive attitude.
And last night, during the girls JV 50 Free, I almost
cried. That’s right. I was brought to tears during a swim
meet. Not exactly the norm. This event was full with swimmers who
struggled to make it the two laps. Their
strokes were far from perfect. Flip turns just didn’t happen. Their starts had
a closer resemblance to a belly-flop.
Some of it was more splashing than swimming. And yet, it was absolutely beautiful.
Here was a group of six girls from three different high
schools who took a chance. Humans are
not made for water. We were designed for
dry land, and yet every day, they throw themselves into a pool. They listen to feedback from their coaches. They look up to more-experienced swimmers for
tips and encouragement. They push
themselves to just keep swimming, swimming, swimming (thank you, “Finding Nemo”,
for your helpful mantra), even when they are tired, even when they just want to
crawl onto the deck and rest. They have
taken a chance, and are growing in leaps and bounds.
Kudos to you ladies, who make me so proud and remind me why
I coach swimming.
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