When I was a child, I did almost every sport a normal little kid would do when they were young; tee-ball, soccer, gymnastics, lacrosse, and more. However, there was one sport that stuck with me for the rest of my life, and that was swimming.

When I was younger I dreaded going to my first swim practice, because I didn’t want to have to leave swim lessons. In swim lessons we would splash around and have fun and learn with different, exciting activities. But in my mind, I pictured swim practice as something much different. I thought all we would do is endless laps with no breaks. I also pictured the coaches always yelling and being mean, but I had the wrong picture in my head the whole time. It was a challenge for my mom to even get me in the car when I knew we were going to swim practice, so she tricked me and said we were going to go get ice cream. Then, when she pulled up to the YMCA doors, I knew we weren’t getting ice cream. Then I thought it would be a good idea to hide under the seat, because I thought my mom would never find me, but she dragged me into the building and then into the locker rooms. I pulled on my suit, figuring I should give it a shot. Maybe my mom was right; maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But when I walked through the doors of the pool deck, I was regretting ever thinking that way. There were so many other kids, but I thought they would all be better than me and laugh at me because I had just finished lessons. Then, my mom brought me over to the bench to sit down and talk to the coach. He calmed me down, and I felt confident enough in myself that when we got on the pool deck I felt like I could hop in and swim until he announced what the warm-up was. In swim lessons, we referred to laps as one lap, two laps, three laps, ect., instead of twenty-five yards, fifty yards, seventy-five yards, ect. So, when he said we were doing a fifty, I assumed he meant fifty laps, but he just meant fifty yards (two laps). This caused me to breakdown and cry. It’s safe to say that I never made it in the water that day, but my mom kept bringing me until I got in the water, and that was the first day I started my favorite sport.