My Swimming Experiences!

In my personal experiences, swimming is the most demanding sport I have ever encountered. Swimming requires great dedication and tons of endurance. This daily obligation I decided to add on to my busy schedule took much time away from other daily obligations. When I swam on a team, it took many hours of studying out of my schedule. I would swim for hours, but when I got home, I was too exhausted to do anything else. Competitive swimming is extremely demanding. Personally it takes more time and effort than any other sport I have ever played, and I have played many sports throughout my life. Swimming was the most team demanding sport also. Swimming took as much effort from one person as it did the entire team. Even though at a swim meet we swim alone it’s the team support that is important. We push each other to get better and work harder. In my experiences, the swim team I was on was much closer and more encouraging than any other sport. I made many friends swimming on my team and I still support my former teammates at all of the swim meets. Also I loved swimming with my team so much that I still practice with them from time to time. I learned how to be supportive and work as a team while swimming on this team. It was a life changing experience for me and I will use my ability to work as a team on projects in college, and in my work force.

Swimming is a huge passion of mine. I used to spend so much time in the pool when I was little my parents thought I was going to turn into a fish, but thankfully I didn't. I swam with the Kings Mountain High School swim team for 3 years and I loved every minute of it, from the hard practices to the easy days where we played water polo. It was all very exciting for me and I would do it all over again. I would stay after practice for extra practice just because I loved being in the pool. I didn't start swimming until my sophomore year, because I was very shy as a freshman and didn't know many people that were on the team. Once I joined I made many friends and I was no longer shy around any of them. Since a swim team doesn't have a limit on their roster, then we could have as many people on our team as we wanted.

Despite that we had no limit to our roster, my first year swimming was the first time any cuts were ever made. The tryouts were held so that the top 3 people in each event were automatically on the team. I swam 3 different events so that I could be automatically set on a team, but my first 2 didn't go so great. The last event I decided to try was butterfly, I was very nervous when it came to this event because I had never swam butterfly and here I was about to swim 100 yards of it. Luckily only 2 other people wanted to swim this event so as long as I finished I was on the team. After all the events were completed the coaches talked it over and only decided to cut a few people off of the team.

My first year was the hardest for me, I was attempting any event I could trying to find the one that fit me best. I swam backstroke every meet because I was very good at it, but I knew there was something else that I could be good at and love at the same time. We had one away meet the entire year, and at that away meet I found my calling. The 500 Freestyle. I swam this event one time, and once was all it took. I was hooked I swam this event every meet. The 500 Freestyle is 20 laps all at once. I then learned I was an endurance swimmer.

My senior year I was swimming was the best year I had ever swam. I dropped over 5 minutes on my 500 time. Since I was a senior I wore a jacket that showed that it was my last year. This jacket is shown in the picture above. My coach pushed me very hard to become better than I ever was that year, and even though I didn't make regional times, I still made a personal best and was very proud of myself.

Now that you have a background of my swimming experiences. I would like to tell you what this blog will be about. I will research several swimming related topics and elaborate on each one. Some of those topics include, "What is Sports Technology?," "Side Effects of Long Term Swimming," "Water Temperature Side Effects," "Benefits of Swimming," and so on. Please check back regularly for updates and new stories. If there are any parents that would like to teach their children how to swim you can check out my website by clicking here, or you can click the link on the right side of the screen.