This Saturday I will be heading to my home town to host the first THS Alumni Swim Meet. The meet begins at noon at the Tipton Kennedy Aquatic Center, and will be a fundraiser to raise money for the cancer research fund. Hopefully we have a good turn out-it should be a lot of fun!
Aside from being a fundraiser, this meet also serves a very sentimental purpose, as well. My swimming roots began less than a mile from this pool, in a pool at the Tipton High School. This pool was less than regulation length, so us swimmers had to swim 5 lengths for 100 yards, instead of just 4 in an actual 25 yard pool. As you can venture to guess, we were very good at flip turns. This tiny, cramped pool, was where my love for swimming began at the young age when my parents took us there for Red Cross swimming lessons, and when I turned 12, I began swimming for the YMCA Swim club. Coach O'Donnell and Coach Herring became my coaches, and played a huge role in cultivating the swimmer I am today.
For a middle school and junior high student, it always amazed me how hard we trained at such a young age. There were several kids in the program and many of them became extremely good. I was decent at that age, but I was blind as a bat, and this was before I was allowed to wear contacts. There were many times I jammed fingers or banged my head on the wall because I came in to fast, not being able to see where I was going. I will never forget during the summer after 8th grade when I got my first pair of contacts, and how my swim times dropped like 5 seconds because I could go full force into the wall without having to run into it!
One season, Coach Herring made signs to hang up during practices and each one had something inspiring on them. They were words to make us think about what we were doing as athletes and how we could push ourselves to become better. There is one that really stuck with me, "In order to do something you've never done before, you have to do something you've never done before." Seems obvious, doesn't it? But if you really think about it, we can all dream as much as we want to about the things we have never done before, but many of us aren't willing to put in the work and whatever else is necessary to achieve those dreams. We forget that we really do have to do something different to accomplish those things, whether it be to practice harder, adopt new techniques; many times, I've found, is that it really takes a change in our attitudes and our perspective.
While I've been preparing myself to swim the channel, I have found that while a lot of the hard training is required, this feat takes more mental capacity than I ever could have fathomed. During long and tiresome hours in the water, I am only left with my thoughts to get me through. By hour 3, menial thoughts have run out, and I have to reach deeper into thoughts that give me perspective on what it is that I am really doing. This always leads me to think about those people that I am doing this for.
I am often reminded of a conversation I had with someone. They had lost a close loved one to cancer and the two of us were talking about my swim. They were asking me a lot of questions, and I told her about all of the obstacles a swimmer faced. The biggest challenge of a channel swimmer is luck-we can do everything we can to train, research all of the right nutrition plans, follow all of the right techniques, book the best pilot vessel, and choose the right set of tides to make our attempt; but in the end, it all depends on the weather. Many a swimmer has had to give up, sometimes within 500 yards of the shores of France, because of unforeseen factors.
After talking about this, my friend grew silent. She then told me, "You know, that is very much like what a cancer patient goes through."
She is right. A cancer patient can consult all of the right doctors, do all of the research they can, follow every treatment plan the doctors give them, take all of the right medications and receive the best treatment; but making a full recovery is never 100% guaranteed. Yet, cancer patients fight as hard as they can, no matter how grim the outlook may be. That is what makes them so inspiring. Many patients fight for years and years. It really makes one realize how incredible our lives really are and what a gift good health is.
Tomorrow as former Tipton swimmers gather to swim and make fools of ourselves (yes, there is a doggie paddle race), I will remember how lucky I am to have grown up in such an incredible swimming program; one that taught me what hard work and discipline is. I will also remember how lucky I am to be able to do this-our health really is a gift-and one that I am privileged to be able to use as a means to fight to end cancer. Please join us!
