Life Changing Day In Life

August 17, 1998 was a life changing day for my entire family in more ways than one. My parents closed on their first home for our family and welcomed their first daughter within hours of each other. In fact, my dad almost missed the birth due to signing the paperwork about an hour away from the hospital in Woodstock, Georgia. My dad learned many things that day including Atlanta traffic at four in the afternoon is terrible, especially if you are trying to get to the hospital to see the birth of your daughter, and patience is not one of my best qualities as I was born six weeks early. Eighteen years later I was leaving the only place that I ever called home. As I drove away with tears rolling down my cheeks, thinking I was ready to leave, I …show more content…
Swimming has played a huge role in shaping me. I started swimming when I was ten years old after being forced to try it on our summer league neighborhood team. After trying many sports to see what I enjoyed and was good at, everything changed as soon as I jumped in the water. I was introduced into a world that will forever be in my heart. I swam year round for Chattahoochee Gold for four and half years until it became too much with school and I focused more on swimming for my school team. “Chattahoochee Gold is a year round swim club that focuses on child development through sport and currently has over eight hundred swimmers on the roster (Gold).” I swam at the Woodstock Aquatic Center in Downtown Woodstock almost every day for four years. Through the many hours spent there, I learned so many life lessons. The coaches and the teammates forced me to learn communication, respect authority, push myself past my mental limits, and learn to have fun all while working towards a goal. The philosophy was “we are stronger together than separately and that striving together brings out the best in each of us.” On top of truly learning what it meant to be a part of a team, one of the best lessons I learned being on this team was what perseverance truly meant. There were so many times in swim meets and during practices that I thought I couldn’t do it, but I learned that you can always do more than you think you can. My high …show more content…
I am forever thankful that swimming led me to people that encouraged me and helped me find and accept who I really am. The photo on the right, which was taken after one of my teammates made her first state qualifying cut at the last meet of the season, truly shows how team support is necessary to succeed. My junior year of high school I was offered a job I wasn’t expecting. I was offered to be the assistant coach of the neighborhood swim team which started my love for the sport. I love coaching the summer swim team because I am able to teach the lessons that I was taught there and help shape them into the swimmers and people that they are. The job of coaching the swim team allowed me to grow in many personal ways such as responsibility and patience. Throughout my life I had been working on my patience and I thought I had improved before taking this job, but I was mistaken. After the first day of coaching I realized I had to change something and I had to change something fast. I had to show

authority to the elementary swimmers whose favorite thing to do is talk to their friends. I also had to take full responsibility for them. If something was to happen to someone in the pool or during a practice, I was the one responsible. All the tough moments are forgotten when your younger swimmers come up to you so excited that they made it across the pool for the first time by themselves and want to