Better Than Any Medal

 

Someone once told me that it was no coincidence that she had met so many incredibly wonderful kids and parents through swimming. She thought it was because a parent, who was willing to let their kid swim, was a parent who was necessarily a very involved parent. They were people who were willing to take a kid to practice 5, 6 maybe 7 days a week, sometimes twice in the same day. A swim parent had to be willing to work at meets, standing in the heat & humidity for hours on end. They were parents who sat through meets that lasted countless hours to watch their kid swim for 3 minutes.

 An athlete who swims has to come to personal terms with the results of their own effort & ability. You can’t blame a slow race on a teammate. The athlete has to learn how to handle disqualifications, missing cuts by a fraction of a second, & tapers that don’t come together at the right time.  Also consider that most teams have practices that start at dawn (or before), since the pools are needed for more lucrative activities later in the day. I remember a swimmer once thanking his mom for waking him up for morning practice every day. He said, “I really appreciated her for that because it was actually still night when I had to get up.”

 I suppose there are other sports that make those kinds of demands on kids & dish out character shaping blows that a kid must work through, but how many teenagers are willing to get up and practice every day when “it is still night"?  What I have seen swimmers go through, surely is more extreme than the things an athlete in a mainstream sport typically encounters. It takes a special kind of kid to want to do that, and a special kind of parent to support them in it year after year.

 It is not just the body of a swimmer that this sport makes strong. It is clearly the mind too. When I think about all our family has poured into this sport, & all the experiences we have shared, it is no wonder that we have formed friendships that are every bit as solid as the muscle and confidence we saw grow in our kids during those years. We have met the most amazing people and made lifelong friends which I will forever be thankful for. They are the gold I earned without even realizing it was happening.