Christopher Rogers

Swimming never appealed to me as a child, especially after, at the age of four, my mother taught me to swim by reserving our neighborhood pool, calling a lifeguard over, and throwing me into the middle of the deep end. I was never taught to fear the water, as were many children, and as a result, I being in the water waded into my conception of "everyday" before long. Swimming competitively began for me when I was five, but never reached its peak until high school, when I was thrown into a school where swimming would be, before too long, the most successful sport in the school’s history.

My conception of swimming changed entirely in high school. It went from forty-five minutes semi-aerobic practices to two hours in the water and one more of weight-lifting. My swimming ability took off and my sophomore year was to be the most successful yet. However, I always had a problem with nerves in swimming, the idea of racing would make me weak and sweaty, hindering my way in the water. At the state competition that year, I placed fourth in the fifty yard freestyle, and helped two relays qualify for All-American times, successes which, via swimming, helped to tear down my anxieties concerning racing, and foster an even better relationship with an activity that has rarely been absent from my life.