1. Swimming.

    With a week to the end of Hamilton swim season, I’ve been experiencing a recent bout of nostalgia lately.

    It has now been the longest I have been away from a pool since I was four years old and still didn’t know how to swim.  As any swimmer knows, our relationship with the sport is very much one of love and hate.  But like most things in life, now that I’m away from it, I miss it so much and really realize how important it was in my life.

    I started swimming when I was five.  Once I finished lessons I started on my first competitive team.  I swam through high school, where I met some of my closest friends and developed some of my deepest relationships.  I finished my last high school swim meet thinking that was the end, the last time I’d be plagued with the smell of chlorine emanating from my pores every time I showered, the last time .03 seconds would mean all that much, the last time I’d feel the exhilaration in those last few laps when mostly you just want to get out and lie on the deck and cry.

    But through an unexpected turn of events, I joined the Hamilton swim team.  There were many times in my four years at Hamilton that I regretted this decision.  It was a four month season in theory but sucked away at my time, my sleep, and my social life for much more of the year than that.  I wondered what opportunities I was missing by being away at meets almost every week, what my grades would be like if I got more than a few hours of sleep a night before 6am practice.  I often found myself pulling out my calendar and counting down the days to the end of the season.

    But here I am, my first year as a Hamilton swimming alum, and viewing the end of season in a different way.  I check the results of their meets with excitement, but always with a twinge of jealousy.  I jump straight to the distance events, thinking of how my times would have compared with the girls from the opposing teams.  I see facebook pictures and statuses about swimming and wish I could be with my team.

    And now it’s a week until NESCACs.  This time was always one of my favorites in the season.  Excitement and energy was always high and yardage was always low.  The team always bonded so much during this time as we looked forward to cashing in all of our hard work, and as we traveled to some other school to compete and to support each other.

    I really do miss it.  As much as the thought of a 7000 yard practice makes my shoulders hurt in memory, the pain and the tiredness and the frustration all paled in comparison to the feelings that I don’t really have words for anymore, or never did.  The reasons I love swimming in spite of all the complaining and moaning and groaning I did.  I want to be there for all of that.  I want to dive in a pool, to experience that first moment of water engulfing your body as you start your race.  I want to care about .03 seconds again, and I want to feel like I’m about to die on lap 50 of the mile.  I want to be with my team and experience that communal excitement as we join together in spite of whatever differences we may have had in the season and we work as a team. 

    Swimming for me has always been for me about relationships - the incredible friends I’ve met, the people who have helped me to learn more about myself, the coaches who have believed in me, and always Maureen.  About how I pushed myself more than I thought possible - not just to work harder, but to stick with a sport I was hardly the best at, knowing I wouldn’t be scoring high points, going through so much frustration but having it all mean something in the end as I touched the wall and looked to the clock and then to my parents in the stand, who never ever missed a meet.

    All of this - this is what I’ll be thinking about this week in Moldova. 





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