Joseph and Collin were standing on the blocks right before their race. They were eight years old, and were sticking their tongues out at each other. “Take your mark” announced the referee, and both of them fell in. I did not like swimming. I felt like I was forced into it. I had no particular desire for it. It was my sister’s thing, I needed my own thing. Jackie was just so perfect. I never resented her for it, but she seemed to get it right all the time. I, on the other hand got it right sometimes. I had been in the water since I was 3 years old, started swim team when I was 7 and by the time I hit 6th grade, I had convinced my parents that I had no future in swimming. That was then, now I’m a lifeguard and would kill to swim. Every chance I get, I go up to the pool. The pool is the best outlet for anything; I can just float and relax if I want to, or if I’m feeling brave, I can do flips off the diving board. Swimming is like floating amongst the clouds but just a little bit better.
I finally quit club swimming when I was in the sixth grade, and as it turned out I was quitting the same time our head coach was. When I was a kid I thought Coach Rick was the best. He planned games for practice once or twice a week, and played Ultimate Frisbee on Wednesdays, but I never knew what a screw up he really was. My mom is really good at finding things on the internet - I’m convinced she does better research than the FBI. My mom knew that Rick had been arrested before for a DUI. When my mom searched for him on the internet, she didn’t come up with much. She looked around a bit more and found his real name. When she
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searched on that, she found all sorts of stuff - he had multiple DUIs, and he had been in and out of jail. When Rick left, the team turned over a new leaf. We repainted the pool, found new coaches, and each family forked up a thousand dollars to keep the pool open. The new head coach turned out to be a bigger screw up than the last coach. From that point on, my sister Jackie would come home crying. It was always about the coach’s pet swimmer. She controlled that team, and anything she wanted it, she got. Every swimmer on that team resented it, but they didn’t have the guts to fight back. So we left that team, and later the coach departed when his star swimmer graduated and the team has yet again turned over a new leaf. They have a new head coach who seems alright and they’re still a small team, but seem to be improving.
I guess you could say I was a little bit jealous of my sisters. Both of them are such great swimmers, and my swim career is over. I wanted to swim again, but club swimming for me was out of the picture. I just couldn’t justify it, I had no future with it and it was expensive. I set my eyes on high school swim and dive instead. Over the summer I worked my a** off to get back into shape. I worked on my butterfly with my co-workers at the pool. I got classes out of the way and joined both the swim and dive teams for boy’s high school swim. At the start I was a terrible diver, way worse than I thought I would be. Swim team on the other hand was easy, and I was already faster than most of the swimmers that had been on it for two or three years. I was fitting right in with the people who were still swimming with Clubs. I expected to at least make Leagues in swimming, in dive maybe. I didn’t care for people on the swim team. The coach was a pushover and my teammates were cutting me down on the daily. I remember one guy told me “You’re going to be the one to screw up the relay”.  I started to hit my stride in the middle of the season. My stroke was the 100 backstroke. My starts were golden and my under waters were
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hard to match. The first time I swam the backstroke I got a 1:15. To make Leagues, I needed a 1:08 and every meet I was getting closer and closer, cutting that time little by little. January was the Last Chance Meet, the last chance to make a League cut. My friend Chris was working at the pool that day and he was cheering me on the whole time. I had a couple of pointless relays, but then my backstroke came up. “Take your mark” said the referee. I rose up. When the whistle went off I leapt as hard as I could, catching air and did a nice back dive continuing with a frenzy of underwater dolphin kicks. When I broke the surface I maintained my speed. I saw the flags over head and counted strokes 1, 2, 3, 4. I flipped over and did my turn, followed by an underwater dolphin kick. It started hurting real bad half way through my race. I knew it would hurt even worse if I didn’t get the league cut. I let out cries of pain as if I was going to die, but I finished and got the time by two one hundredths of a second. I was dead. I left everything I had in the water, and it was worth it.
My dive season wasn’t off to such a great start. I was deathly afraid of backflips, because once I tried to backflip on my bike and I landed on my neck. I laid there on the ground, with the wind knocked out of me, and I thought “This is it, I’m gonna die. Well, at least I died from doing something cool.” I closed my eyes and started thinking my “last” happy thoughts. I thought of cookies and cotton candy, then I thought of foam pits and trampolines. After a few minutes of thinking happy thoughts I opened my eyes, and I was looking straight up at the sky. As I sat up I could feel my upper-back popping. I examined myself to make sure getting up was a good idea, then stood up, mounted my bike and rode home. So back flips and dive season started out a bit difficult.
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I had a different coach for dive team, Coach Wally. He was the best coach I’ve ever had in anything. He taught me all about balance and showed me the ropes about my approach. The first few weeks were learning the approach, which are the steps taken on the board leading to the dive. First you start way back on the board, take four steps, do a hop, land and jump. Looking back at my old approach just horrifies me. It was very unbalanced and exaggerated. The most important thing in diving is being as straight as possible when leaving the board. When I did backflips or back-dives, I leaned quite a bit to make sure I would clear the board, especially at the beginning of the season. As a result, I did not get enough height to finish my dives. It would take time to correct that approach.
I could not ask for a better team, they were supportive and funny people. We were all seniors. Nathan was great, he was a very good diver, and could make State in his sleep. Peyton was the captain. He was notorious for having everything you could possibly want - Speedos, got em’, shammies, got em’.  Peyton used to be a gymnast, and one time before a meet, Peyton and I had a hand-standing competition. To my surprise I beat him. Peyton was strong, no doubt about it, he was kind of like a body builder. Daniel was something else. He is probably the funniest person I know. One time he had to give a presentation for school, and he presented in a Speedo. I went through middle school with Daniel. The first day of practice he came up to me,
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Andy Beal.” I replied.
Hey, it’s been ages dude. Good to see ya man.”
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Usually at practice we’d have time in between dives, so we’d just chill in the water right under the starting blocks. One time Daniel was ahead of me – he’d always kind of squat down on the board to drain the water out of his speedo between dives. On this particular day, he decided to drain his speedo on my head. It was really gross. Funny, but gross. Half way through the season, we started doing qualifying meets. To make League in diving, you just needed to have eleven successful dives. I made League at that first qualifying meet. It was dawning on me that I had just the slightest chance of making it to Districts. To make Districts you needed to get a score of 244 points. My scores were getting better and better each meet, but they started leveling out at 200 points. It was possible that I’d make Districts by allocation, but it was looking pretty dismal. After the League meet, I thought I would be eliminated, so I went to practice prepared to say my farewells to my team.
“Andy, you know if you didn’t make districts, you can’t keep swimming and diving with us” said my coach.
“Yes” I replied.
“But keep your suit on because you made it!”
I had mixed emotions. I was pleasantly surprised, but making it Districts in diving, rather than swimming was just confusing - I was shocked that I made districts in a sport that I’d never done before. I looked at the psych sheets and I definitely made it – of  twenty four spots, I had just enough points to get the twenty-fourth spot. Making it to Districts was far better than I ever expected when I started the season.
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My older sister Jackie was a great swimmer. She has been to NCAA Division III national championships in swimming, and she has been to championships which feature the best swimmers from North America. Over mid-winter break, my family and I went down to Corvallis, Oregon for the college Northwest Conference meet. Jackie, a Whitworth Pirate, was shredding the competition. She was a backstroker, and a damn good one. Me matching those times was ridiculous. From watching my sister race, I noticed that she’s a lot like the guy from “Temple Run”. She starts out keeping up with the crowd, then gets faster and faster, until she is body lengths ahead of the competition. Jackie won all of her events, and was named Woman Swimmer of the Year for the Northwest Conference. She makes me proud. Generally swim meets are pretty boring so I always bring my guitar or ukulele along. Most times I volunteer for the National Anthem, unfortunately a very un-tuned Alto did the National Anthem.
Jackie has a roommate named Bridget. She is very smart, 4.0 and her major is chemistry. She is also drop dead gorgeous. Jackie always told me how Bridget has a crush on me. It’s not a like a real crush, she just thinks I’m cool. It would make her day if I just said “hi” to her. Over lunch Jackie was telling me how Bridget wasn’t having a good meet. We came up with an idea. Bridget came in first at prelims in the 200 butterfly. When you’re first, you get to choose a walkout song to play as the whole heat walks out during finals. Generally, you would give the announcer an iPod to play over the speakers, but instead, I was going to walk out with Bridget playing my ukulele.
Kevin, my sister’s boyfriend, texted Bridget and asked her. She said yes, I was on. When we got to the pool for finals at 4:30, I found Kevin and asked him if he’d seen her, he looked
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around and said no. Then he smiled and was looking at someone behind me, I turned around and Bridget came running “Are you for real, are you really going to do it?” asked Bridget.
“Heck, Yeah.” I replied, she gave me a big hug,
“How loud is it?” she asked
“Not very” I replied as I gave it a few strums
“Oh well, it’s still really cool. Okay the 200 fly is the last event, Jackie is in the 200 backstroke, then there’s the 200 breast, and then the 200 fly, we’ll meet over there to do the walkout.” said Bridget.
“Okay, sweet” I replied. I went back upstairs to the balcony to sit with my parents and annoy my dad with ukulele music while I waited for the 200 fly. It was at least an hour or two before the 200 fly, I went out to the deck an event or two early. I waited for Bridget and the rest of her heat. A few minutes later Bridget showed up, she was super happy and excited.
“It’s gonna be great. The only people who are going to hear the music are the people we walk by.” said Bridget. We started to walk. All of the teams were so happy and full of spirit. It was like going to a Seattle Seahawks game without all of the drunk people. Bridget was giving everybody high fives, as I strummed “Pirates of the Caribbean” on my ukulele.
“Take your mark”, said the referee, and the start whistle went off. Bridget did her fly and dropped 5 seconds, taking first and blowing the competition out of the water. After the meet was over, mom and I were saying our farewells to the team.
“Bridget, that was a kick a** job on your fly” said my mom.
“Hey thanks” she replied. She gave me a great big hug and said “It was all because of you.”
I felt very good about myself. This was definitely one of the coolest moments in my life, I was overwhelmed with joy, I felt so honored. She chose me to do her walkout song.
Although I hated swimming as a kid and wished I had never been in the water, now I’m sorry I gave up on it. Every time I see my sister smoke the competition, I am very proud but I also feel a sense of failure, I ask myself why I stopped, why did I give up? It’s bittersweet, my thing was there the whole time, and I just didn’t realize it.