Swimming styles

water flow. Watching Simone Manuel’s race we also notice she is wearing a swimming cap. By wearing a swimming cap, swimmers will not be dragged. Drag, otherwise known as resistance, slows the swimmer…

that I half dread, half look forward to all day long. The point where I take a leap and let the stress of the school day fall behind me. The dread comes from knowing how hard my next two hours are going to be and calculating how many miles I’ll be swimming today. But there’s nothing in my life comparable to the joy I get when I slip into the chlorinated water of San Jose Pool every day. Six lanes, plus a diving well, hold all of my secrets, hopes, worries, and goals. Every afternoon I enter and…

experience started in a small desert town, and she achieved almost everything she wanted to. In a town with only one movie theater, no mall, surrounded by heat resistant crops. The front yards were shaded by olive trees, and scorpions swam in the swimming pools. The school…

in Port Credit Ontario. She was the third oldest out of her eleven siblings. She began swimming when she was only three years old, and then started competitively swimming. At nine years old, she won her first long distance medal for swimming 1.5 miles in Port Credit River, Ontario. Winnie is mostly known for her skills in swimming but was nominated for Canada’s all-around Athlete of the Year due to her swimming, diving, softball, track and field, and basketball, tennis, along with volleyball and…

My freshman year, the Mount Si High School Swim Team had its first official season. I was one of 15 girls on the team. Hardly anyone knew we existed in the community and at the high school. The fall of my junior and senior year, managing the swim team became my project. I was promoted to team captain. I helped grow the team from that original 15 to over 40 girls by going to the middle schools for recruiting trips and spreading the word about swim team throughout the high school. Just like every…

my decision, I also thought it would be a great way to meet new friends, get in shape and have fun. At the time, this was the extent of what I believed swim would do for me, but as I finished, my fourth year on this team, it was very evident that swimming had done significantly more. Being in sports has resulted in designating my education as a top priority. My coach always says, “You are a student first and an athlete second.” Embodying this expectation has become…

The Lesson in Quitting For the past 7 years of my life, swimming has played a huge role. Growing up, I had always enjoyed being in the water, and was one of the odd kids that genuinely enjoyed swimming lessons, no bribes required (thinking about it, I wish I had some of those kids in the lessons I teach now). Overtime, it began to feel less like a passion and more like an obligation; something I had committed to that was too late to stop. I was afraid to quit, afraid to disappoint, and trying to…

out if this would be the best thing for me. In sixth grade I was told I had runners’ knee at that it was common in most runners. I was able to do track for two years before my knees got the best of me. In seventh grade I started to do competitive swimming and I loved it. Until I started to figure out that there was something wrong with my knees and it was not runners’ knees. As I swam and walked I could feel my knees popping and snapping. I went to a doctor and we did every nonsurgical option…

My swim team has an honored tradition of shaving their heads the night before the district swim meet. Districts is by far the biggest meet of the year where all swimmers attempt to break personal records and qualify for state. This shaving of the heads promises a possible time drop of maybe one tenth of a second and also builds a sense of team unity. In 2013, my freshman year of high school, I refused to partake in this sacred ritual. Throughout the season, I knew that the entire team expected…

Boulder Boulder is the best thing I have gotten from a lake. We have so many funny stories about boulder. Boulder is a rock we found in the lake. Holly, Mia and I were swimming in Mia’s lake. I was playing hide and seek with them until all of a sudden I stepped on something very sharp. Not really thinking about it too much I just kept playing the game, I thought it’s a lake there are always little rocks I step one, until I stepped on it again. I got tired it and dove underwater and tried to…