My entire life I have been a swimmer. My parents put me in the pool as soon as possible. Once I saw my brother swimming I knew that I wanted to as well. I joined the Princeton Lakes Pirhanas as a four year old and swam have been with the same team ever since. I worked my way through the groups and I even competed at the summer state competition for the team. Swimming was always my sport in the summer but during the school year I prioritized lacrosse. My swim coaches had always told me that I should look into swimming year around but I was very hesitant because I have always loved playing more “team” sports.

Eventually, in my 7th grade year, I started trying to play both lacrosse and swimming competitively. Swimming was very challenging and I felt behind because I had not joined the team earlier. However, I grew to love the sport and even stopped playing lacrosse and fully committing to the pool.

I even became a coach for my first swim team going into high school and I continue to coach. Swimming has taught me many things and I have come to love the various aspects of the sport. I love the ability to see improvements and know that I will directly improve from every hour I can get in the pool (even if it's at 5 in the morning before school). I also learned that my previous misconceptions about swimming not being a team sport were wildly inaccurate. In both my sophomore and junior years on my high school we were able to win the state meet. No one swimmer made this possible, but with every single swimmer scoring even just a couple points for the team, we were able to pull through. I will never forget the screaming from the bleachers for every single one of our swimmers in finals. I continue to love the sport and though I no longer swim for hours and hours a week I know that I will always remember what the sport has done for me.