“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein. Only swimmers would truly understand this. Every single day, we drag ourselves to the freezing pool where we swim back and forth for hours and hours upon end, hoping for success all the while. Depending on the day of the week, we’ll pull ourselves out of the water, change, and head home. On other days, we’ll stay to lift weights, run, and complete physically demanding exercises. We do all of this after a two hour long, hard core swim practice. The next day, we do it all over again. But, there is a method to our madness. The old saying, practice makes perfect, applies to swimmers more than any other athlete in the world. We bust our bottoms day in and day out, following the same routine, staring at the same black line on the bottom of the pool, and completing the same sets over and over again. As crazy as it may seem, this cycle makes us better. Our practices may be ruthless and torturous, but they pay off in the long run. In competition, we sometimes achieve times we never thought possible for ourselves, but no one, other than family and close friends, is there to watch us. We may work this hard, but we’re the only ones who know it. The rest of the world is convinced that swimming is not a sport, and even if they think it is a sport, they’ll most likely believe that it’s strictly a wimp sport.
I’m here to inform you that it’s not, and that swimmers are tired of being ignored. We train for one of the most physically demanding sports on Earth, and when people tell me that swimming is easy, I do not let them get away with it. I tell them to join me at a practice, as I want to see how long they’d actually last. I predict around fifteen minutes, thirty at the most, but people still don’t get it. I dare you to go to a high school football game, and then a high school swim meet. At the football game, the whole town will be there. Kids who aren’t even in high school yet will be there. Parents, friends, adults, children, and anyone who has some spare time will show up. The game will be on the front page of the newspaper the next day, and everyone will be talking about the outcome. On the other hand, nobody even pays attention to the swim meets. The only people who show up are family. Maybe if a friend is extremely bored, they’ll come, and eighth graders who plan on swimming in high school may make an appearance as well. Other than that, the pool deck is empty. We as swimmers don’t get enough credit, but we’re going to start standing up for ourselves. We’re going to be so great that people can’t help but be intrigued by us. After all our lifestyle is much harder than a football player’s. We don’t get time-outs, or substitutions in the middle of a race. We have to dig deep down and find the energy to keep moving, which is more work than a football player will ever have to do. Swimming is the real sport here, and should be recognized. Next time you see a swim meet on your high school’s sport calendar, I suggest you attend it. Who knows what could happen? You could end up loving it, and writing about it, and going to every single event held by that team. You could even be the person to finally make swimming famous. I suggest that everyone gives this a try, because you might just end up changing the swimming world forever.
~Haley
