My first day of club swim team, I left the pool dead tired. I hadn’t been able to do all of our drills quite right, and I had swam more than I could have ever imagined. Despite these things, I felt a level of energy and invigoration I had never experienced before. I returned to the pool the next day, too sore to walk, and excitedly launched myself back into our lunges and push-ups and laps in the pool. For the first several years I swam, I left each practice with a sense of giddiness and focus I have yet to find anywhere else. When I swam, the everyday issues I felt melted away. Each stroke pulled me into a rhythm that numbed my mind and strengthened me more than muscle-deep.

I had to work harder to be competitive in swim than I’ve ever had to work at anything else in life. I learned the value of hard work and what it meant to invest my time and energy in something to see it fail to pay off. There were practices that wore me out so much mentally and physically that I’d be ready to cry or be sick, but these were the same practices that taught me how tough I am-- I never quit when it got hard.

As I got older, swim started to drain me instead of invigorate me. My team environment was breaking me down, and, following a bout of pneumonia, I realized that I had to choose between my academics and my club swim team. Halfway through sophomore year of high school, I quit my club team. During the winter season of my junior year, I returned to the most grueling high school swim season yet. I was juggling four AP classes and three honors along with six clubs and 8 PM swim practices. When I broke down in calculus one day, I knew that this had to be my last season. I was crying too much for swim to be something that benefitted me any longer.

Now a freshman in college, I look back on my swim career with bittersweet nostalgia. I miss the brilliant clarity that I felt after every practice for the first few years. I still haven’t found anything else to rival the endorphin high that swim gave me. I don’t, however, miss the stress the meets used to give me or the forced decision between swim and sleep or a social life. I think I will always love swim, even if I don’t make it to the pool much anymore.