I am a freshman swimmer for the Lewis Cass Queenfish! I swam for five years when I was younger.  I was on the Lewis Cass Summer Swim Team, and then I stopped for a couple years to play basketball.  When I got into junior high, I decided to swim again! For the past three years I have swum and loved just about every minute of it. There have been hard practices and sometimes I didn’t think I was going to make it through the whole set, but I have stuck with it despite the struggles!

The practices aren’t easy, but they are worth it! I play three other sports: golf, cheer and track. None of them compare to swim. Swimming through the chlorine everyday is my passion; nothing feels as good as when I am at a meet and the official blows the whistle to tell me to get up on the starting block: I have this adrenaline rushing through my body and it is a sensation like no other.

I have swum hundreds of events, but for some reason I get nervous no matter what the event is. Breastroke is my number one stroke. I am always in lane three so I have people from the other team on each side of me. I like to look at the people next to me to see if I am winning which I know slows me down, but every time I am in front of them, I get this feeling like I got hit by a lightning bolt of adrenaline through my body.

I push hard when I reach the flags so I can hit the wall as hard as I can, knowing I tried my best because I don’t like to get out of the pool and think to myself, “I could’ve done better if I had just tried my hardest.” When I am in a race, I just think to myself, “I don’t care what place I get as long as I finish and I have tried my hardest” it’s nice to win, but it’s even better to know that I tried my hardest and even possibly earned my personal best time.

I have many goals for my high school career as a swimmer. The one I hope to accomplish the most is beating the Cass record for breaststroke. The girl’s record time is a 1:07! My best time right now is a 1:21, but by the end of my freshman season, I want to break 1:20 and get as close as possible to my goal for next year. I have a lot of hard work ahead of me to reach my dreams, but I know I can do it. However, it hasn’t helped me to reach my goal since I broke my fingers and we also haven’t had very many practices due to the weather!

My dream would be to get a scholarship for swim! I want to swim in college and keep working at my goals. I will never be perfect at breaststroke, but I can always improve my time with hard work and dedication. For right now, when I think of goals for college, the biggest goal is to get under a minute! That would be epic!!

Swimming is a huge part of my life! Sometimes it stresses me out with all of the meets, practices, other sports and homework, but I wouldn’t change a thing! I would encourage any young swimmer to keep going and keep working because it is a very exciting and rewarding sport!