It was late 2015 when I started to swim for a team, and back then I didn’t think much of it. After all, it was just another sport I was trying, and I planned to have fun. Little did I know, though, that this was going to be much more than that. This would be the sport I would continue with for the next 9 years of my life, and this would also be the sport I fell very much in love with.
When I started to learn the complete basics of swimming at the age of four, way before joining the team, I was terrified of the water. Terrified. Whenever I would go to the beach or a pool, I would just climb up my dad’s leg, frightened. It wasn’t until I finally started to be brave and step foot into the water that my fear of this kind of stuff vanished, and after roughly a year of lessons, I joined the Greater Lowell Barracudas swim team. The first practices were rough, and I was very behind compared to the rest of the swimmers in my group. My lessons only taught me how to tread water and float on my back, so I had to learn all the new strokes as well. I practiced hard and well, and although I may not have been the fastest in my group, I made some major improvements.
The first meet rolled around, and boy was I nervous. Nervous might be an understatement, because I was trying to make up every excuse possible not to go. The meet was located at Danvers YMCA, a 25-yard pool with some windows to one side and the spectators’ bleachers right across from them, as well as a couple of bleachers in front of the pool. That was where we (the team) were situated for the meet, and I was swimming two events that day: the 25-yard Freestyle and the 25-yard Backstroke. My nervousness grew to such an extreme as my event came closer that I started to scream towards my parents not to make me swim this.