Relentless Spirit
Page 8
The difference was immediately apparent. From the very first day, I just loved my Starfish practices. Todd would turn out all the lights in the pool, and blast the music, and we’d swim in the dark. On Halloween, he’d bring a bunch of pumpkins to the pool and incorporate them into our workouts. He’d have us do relay races. You might have to get across the pool without the pumpkin touching the water. Or, you might have to swim the entire way with the pumpkin underwater the whole time. We would really have to work together as a team to find the most efficient way to work within these constraints—we all wanted to win, right? He believed that if we weren’t having fun, he wasn’t doing his job. He was so creative, coming up with all these different drills for us to do, so our practices never really felt like practice; our work never really felt like work. Plus, he had a ton of energy and enthusiasm for the sport, and those kinds of things are infectious. And the better I got as a swimmer, the more he was able to offer. He could watch me swim just a couple of strokes and give me a dozen things to work on to up my game.
I was thrilled to be a part of a team like the Colorado Stars, and my parents were thrilled for me. It was a big commitment for all of us—a big step up from what we’d been doing. Practices were three or four times a week to start, and soon there were morning swims as well. It all depended on when we could get indoor-pool time, so the schedule was always changing on us, but my parents never complained, not once. Mom kept track of it all, which was a job in itself. Remember, this was back before smartphones and tablets, so it took some doing, coordinating all these different activities. I kept up with all those other sports for as long as I could, all the way through middle school, but there weren’t enough hours in the week for me to do all the things I wanted to do.
Looking back, it’s amazing to me the sacrifices my parents made to get me where I needed to be. Mom was working as a physician at this time, based in Denver, where Dad was working as a business consultant, so they were spread pretty thin. I don’t think I recognized how busy they were at the time—in fact, I’m sure I didn’t. I mean, I could see that my parents were committed, I could see they were always there, but it never occurred to me that they were juggling work and family obligations and time they might have spent doing something else. Mom even signed on to serve as chaperone as I started traveling to meets out of state. One year, I did well enough at states to be selected for the Colorado All-Star Team. I was just nine years old, and I’d be swimming several individual events and on the under-ten relay teams at a meet in Lawrence, Kansas. It was a very big deal, but I didn’t know anybody else who was going. There might have been a few older kids from the Colorado Stars making the trip, but they were much older than me, so I was going to be on my own. I was more excited than nervous, because I always liked meeting new people, and I always got along well with the older kids. But Mom was more nervous than excited, because she worried about me being so far from home, essentially on my own. She didn’t exactly buy into Dad’s playbook on giving children a wide berth when it came to youth sports, at least not when it came to related activities away from the sport itself, not when I was just nine years old. The way the trip was set up, our parents were supposed to drop us off at the University of Denver at four o’clock in the morning for the twelve-hour drive to Kansas, and the thought of sending me off like that, in the middle of the night, headed for the great unknown, must have been a little too much for my mother, so she volunteered to chaperone. I don’t think she told me until we got to the University of Denver, but she had her bag packed and was ready to go.
MOM: It was quite a trip! Twelve hours each way, in a noisy bus with nonstop Disney movies! What I didn’t know before we left was that the older kids were meant to room by themselves, in groups. The younger kids, the under-tens, they had to have a parent assigned to the room with them, which of course made sense. So I had three kids assigned to my room. Missy and I shared one of the double beds, and the other two girls shared the other bed. We didn’t really know these girls, so I made an effort to get to know them. These girls were my responsibility, and of course they wanted to be with the other kids on the trip, so in the evening they wanted to leave the room and join the rest of the group. I didn’t like that idea. I felt I should know where they were at all times. I couldn’t have them running up and down the stairs in the hotel, so I ran a tight little ship and I thought everything was just fine. But then, Missy pulled me away from the girls and asked to talk to me in private. We went into the bathroom and closed the door and Missy said, “Mom, they’re calling you the worst chaperone ever.” I said, “Why?” So she told me it was because I wouldn’t let them have any fun, and all the other girls were running around the hotel. They felt like they were missing out. So I told Missy I knew just what to do, and we went back out into the room and I told the other girls why I was being so careful. I told them I was only trying to keep them safe, to take care of them the same way I’d want someone to take care of Missy if she was on a trip like this without me. We had a nice little talk, and we had a fun night in the room together, and later that night the cutest thing happened. We’d all gone to bed, and the room was quiet, and I woke up and saw that one of the other little girls had come over to our bed. She was homesick, she said. She couldn’t sleep. She said, “Can I get in the bed with you and Missy?” And she crawled right in. It’s like we’d known each other for years and years, instead of half a weekend.
I remember that trip. (Mom really was the worst chaperone ever—I don’t care what kind of spin she wants to give it.) That was one of the first, but before long there was always a trip coming up on the calendar. There were state meets and zone meets and zone camps. One of the big reasons I started paying attention to my times was because that’s how you qualified for these trips. It was the greatest motivation, because the trips were so much fun. I started building this network of great swimming friendships—kids I’d meet at zone camps or sectionals. We’d see each other year after year, and after a while, once we were old enough to start e-mailing and IM’ing each other, we were able to keep connected all year long. (Throwback to AOL Instant Messaging!) It got to where we’d know who was going to be on this trip or that trip, so we all had something to look forward to. It made it all so much more exciting. The swimming part was key, and I was pushing myself to swim a personal best each time out, but at this early age the drive to do well had as much to do with making sure I was eligible to go on all these great trips as it did with improving my times.
It was just a couple of years after I’d joined the Stars that I started to notice our family was a little different from the other families we were meeting through swimming. I was still just a little girl, but I could see how a lot of the parents would interact with their kids on the pool deck, in the hotel, wherever. Some of my friends would get these scared looks on their faces before a race, like they were afraid to mess up. Or maybe, after a disappointment, I’d see someone start to cry or panic because they knew they were about to get chewed out by a parent or a coach. My parents were not at all like that, and if Todd had been that kind of coach, I wouldn’t have worked with him for very long. The only pressure I felt before any of these meets or camps was the pressure I put on myself—and because we tended to approach swimming in a fun-first way, there was never really all that much pressure. Looking back, I know this mind-set flowed in a meaningful way from my parents. They were chill, so I was chill. They didn’t make winning a priority, so I didn’t make winning a priority.
The first bit of pressure I felt when it came to swimming had more to do with scheduling and logistics than it did with anything going on in the pool. One of the ongoing conversations in our house, going back as far as I can remember, was about taking on more than I could handle. Even at a young age, my parents treated me like a mature person, capable of making my own decisions, and taking responsibility for those decisions. By the time I was seven or eight, they wanted me to learn to think things through. So I did, and I took my job seriously.
Early on, these conversations were no more in-depth than a parent telling a child she couldn’t have all the ice cream she wanted because she’d get a bellyache, but after a while I understood that I had to pick and choose among the things I loved to do. School came first, of course. It was understood that if I couldn’t stay ahead of my homework and keep getting good grades, I couldn’t participate in any of these activities—forget all of them. So that was a given. And they never once came right out and told me I couldn’t sign up for this or that activity. The one rule my parents did have was that I couldn’t drop a sport in the middle of a season, so these conversations always happened before they signed me up. They wanted to make sure I understood that I was making a commitment to my teammates, to the coach, to the program, and that I was meant to see it through, and I took that commitment seriously. We all did. Nothing seemed to set my father off like the news that one of my little teammates had up and quit in the middle of a season. It happened—quite often, in fact—and it was one of his pet peeves. And so, in time, it became one of mine as well.
And it wasn’t just sports and organized activities I had to learn to prioritize. There were birthday parties and sleepovers I wanted to be a part of, too. The more I started traveling to these different swimming events, the more I was taken away from my friends. They were all active in sports, too, or maybe in dance, or art, or music. Most of my friends were busy, busy, busy. But very quickly, my version of busy was different from theirs, because mine took me away from home, so there was this constant tug and pull, between where I might have wanted to be in the moment and where I knew I wanted to be over the long haul.
Here’s Mom again, to tell how it looked from where she sat.
MOM: Whenever there was one of these conflicts, Missy would come to me and say, “Mom, I’ve got a decision to make.” She’d never throw up her hands or pout around the house. She was a thoughtful child. “I’ve got a decision to make.” That was always my cue, and I’d usually say, “What’s that, sweetie?” And she’d lay it out for me. Let’s say her friend Sarah was having a sleepover party on Friday night. Missy would tell me all about it, what they were going to eat, who was coming, what movie they were going to watch. I’d listen and say, “So what’s the problem?” I wanted to hear her say it. I thought it was important for her to understand the dilemma. She’d say, “Well, I’ve got a meet on Saturday, and I really need to get my rest.” So we’d talk about it. I’d say, “What do you think we should do?” It wasn’t her problem, it was our problem, but I wanted Missy to come up with the solution. Most times, she’d find a compromise. Maybe she’d go for dinner, and stay to watch the movie, and I’d pick her up at ten o’clock. When she got older, she’d stay out a little later. She’d take a nap in the afternoon to make up for it. Whatever time she wanted me or Dick to come get her, we never complained about the hour. We were just happy Missy was getting to enjoy this time with her friends, but it was so hard for her, missing out on so many get-togethers.
Sure, I missed out on a lot. And I knew it, every time. But the trade-off was always worth it. Swimming opened up such a world of possibilities for me. Even at nine or ten years old, I could see that it was becoming so much more than a fun outlet. It was empowering. To invest all that time in such a single-minded, laser-focused way, in the pursuit of a dream . . . it shapes you, becomes a part of your personality, going ever forward. Only, here’s the thing: the “dream” kept changing. I might have thought about winning a gold medal when I watched the Olympics on television, but that wasn’t anything more than the dream of a little girl. I might have thought about making the national team, or qualifying for Olympic trials, or posting a national age-group (or NAG) record. With each race, each meet, each opportunity, the dreams kept getting bigger, but the “goals” underneath those dreams were always the same. To have fun. To work hard. To do my best. That’s what it came down to, really.
And, so, I kept swimming.
My Letting-Go Moment
2009 JUNIOR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS—FEDERAL WAY, WASHINGTON
There was a lot of pressure on me to try out for worlds in the summer of 2009, although it’s tough to say, looking back, where that pressure was coming from. It’s tough to even call it pressure. Whatever it was, it wasn’t coming from my coach, Todd Schmitz, and it certainly wasn’t coming from my parents—putting pressure on me wasn’t exactly their thing. It’s more like it was in the air and all around. Like it was a natural next step. And I guess in a lot of ways it was. I’d been to Olympic trials the year before, so I was already knocking on those doors, ready to take it to the next level. But at the same time, I was still only fourteen years old and there was a lot for me to learn, a lot I could still accomplish at the junior level.
I was ready and I wasn’t ready—the story of my young career, it seemed.
The way these meets fell that year, I could swim at the world championship trials and attempt to make the worlds team or I could go to junior nationals. I couldn’t do both. So we talked it through. Me and Todd. Me and my parents. Todd and my parents. All four of us, together. We went at it every which way, trying to see what made the most sense. And the thing of it is, I had been swimming really well. I was starting to make a splash. (Sorry, but I’m never one to pass up a corny pun.) People in and around swimming were taking notice, which was really exciting and really weird. I don’t mean weird in a bad way, only in a still-getting-used-to-it way. It was unsettling, to have to swim with all these new sets of eyes on me. Unfamiliar—that’s probably the best word for it, because I was just trying all this stuff on, seeing how I’d perform under the weight of all these expectations.
I’d been making noise at the local level for a long time, setting a bunch of state records and national age-group records, but now the stakes were starting to change. Now we were hearing from coaches, sponsors, USA Swimming officials, a bunch of people who cared about the sport and started to take an interest. All these folks, they were rooting for me, but they didn’t exactly know what was best for me. For that, I could look to only Todd and my parents. Todd for the swimming part, and my parents for the Missy part.
This last was key, because my mother and father were the ones who had my back. They were the ones who’d been there for me since the very beginning, who’d continue to be there for me long after I swam my last race. For them, it wasn’t just about swimming. It was about me. That’s not always the case with young athletes. A lot of parents, a lot of families, they’re in a hurry to get to that big stage. You see it in all sports at the youth level, this tendency to push a young athlete to reach for the stars when really what he or she should be doing is building a solid base. Getting comfortable with his or her body, with his or her ability. So that was the tug and pull here. Do you race through every open door, or just the ones that take you where you want to go? At the world championships, which were in Rome that year, my best shot at making the team would have been the 100-meter freestyle, and maybe a relay. As much as we all might have wanted to go to Rome (what fourteen-year-old kid doesn’t want to go to Rome?), it didn’t make a lot of sense. We ran a kind of cost-benefit analysis, and in the end the practical benefits of competing at the juniors, where I could swim all my events, outweighed the cost of competing at worlds, where (if I made it!) I would most likely swim only one event.
So it was decided, and I was totally on board. As a bonus it worked out that the U.S. Open (the biggest meet of the year for American swimmers other than the World Championships trials) was the week before juniors, in the same pool, so I was able to swim the last couple of days of the open and then take a day off before juniors kicked in. The more time in the pool, the better; the more time in competition, the better. That was the thinking. I ended up breaking a bunch of national age-group records—in some cases, dropping a full second, maybe a second and a half.
I posted five NAGs, four of which still stand as of this writing, and since those readers who are also swimmers might appreciat
e it, I’ll share those times here:
50-meter freestyle—25.23
100-meter freestyle—54.03
200-meter backstroke—2:09.16
200-meter individual medley—2:12.73
I was beyond thrilled with my results. Out of this one meet, I got my first Swimming World cover, so things were starting to click for me. I was turning heads, opening eyes—all of that. Plus, I was feeling strong, invincible—all of that, too. But then something happened to throw me off my game. Remember, one of the reasons I went to juniors that year was to swim all my events, to grow into my God-given ability, to gain some experience. One of the benefits of competing at juniors was learning how to manage all these different swims, all these different strokes, all these different distances, in a back-to-back kind of way. What a lot of people don’t realize is how crazy it can feel, in the middle of one of these five-day or weeklong competitions. If you’re swimming in multiple events, you’re in and out of the pool. There’s no letup. There are preliminary heats and finals. There’s the time you need to warm up, the time you need to warm down, the time you need between races for rest and recovery. Sometimes the schedule works in your favor, depending on what events you’re swimming, and sometimes it works against you, and some swimmers have a hard time keeping it all together. You can’t just dive into the pool and put it all out there and hope for the best each time out. You can maybe get away with that on the youth circuit, in local events, but it doesn’t work when you’re competing against the best of the best. It doesn’t work over time. You need some kind of game plan—a long-game plan. And here I was, still figuring it out, learning what I could ask my body to do, how to take care of myself, how to push myself.
It all came to a head for me in my preliminary heat in the 200-meter freestyle, an event I really wanted to do well in. And it wasn’t just me—a lot of people were expecting me to do well. It was a morning swim, and I also had to swim the 100-meter backstroke that same morning, so in my head I was dragging. Physically, I was doing okay, but I’d allowed myself to overthink, to worry. The day hadn’t even started yet and already I was stuck—that’s the way a frantic competition schedule can mess with you, and here it messed with my head a little bit more than I might have expected because I was the center of so much attention. I was trying to find the right balance between preserving my energy and putting in just enough effort to advance to the finals. In prelims, when you get to a higher level of competition, you hold a little something back, especially if you’re swimming multiple events on the same day. I was still learning how to apply this strategy, but I understood it in theory. There’s no sense going all out and making finals by several seconds, and then finding you have nothing left with the race on the line, right? Trouble is, it’s not so easy to see where you are in a crowded field. It all comes down to your times, but if you happen to catch a slow heat, and you’re all the way out in front, you need a certain amount of experience to know your pace, to know your body. It’s not always enough just to beat the field—the eight fastest times can come from other heats, so you need to understand your body clock. You need to find that sweet spot between just enough and everything you’ve got.