Kailey Teyner

To call swimming my talent is an understatement. Swimming is virtually the beam which everything else in my life balances. My parents threw me in the pool at the youngest age possible, and with lessons I was decent. At age four I started swimming competitively on a summer swim team. The team practiced in my neighborhood pool, so during the summer I practically lived in the pool. I swam with that team every summer until I was nine, which was when we moved. In my new city, I joined a different swim team. The coach of this team recruited me to join his year-round club team, and that August I accepted the offer. I swam with both the year-round team and the summer team all throughout middle school. I first qualified for a State Championship when I was twelve, where I got 2nd place in my individual event among other things. I qualified for state the years following. In high school, I joined the high school swim team, making me a member of now three teams for the same sport. With this, I qualified for both high school and year-round club state. I got to travel all over to compete in the meets; places throughout Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and more. The summer I turned sixteen, I began coaching for the summer swim team that I swam for. When I turned seventeen, I got another job as a lifeguard at a different pool. So, one thing that makes me who I am is the interconnectedness of swimming within my life. Between my swimming competitively from the ages of 4-18, to my jobs at different pools, to my future plans of continuing to swim and eventually teaching my children to swim, I can attribute most of who I am now to how I’ve been raised by the pool.