How many posts have you read about champions who won medals, crushed records?
You’re living these last hours of 2021 thinking that on that shelf, in that drawer, you would have wanted metal to gather dust. The dust you now pluck off the shelves to make room for your backpack.
Even today you grabbed it in a hurry. You wanted to sleep, no school. Instead you were still there, with your tool bag tossed to the side of the pool and the black line waiting for you.
THIS WAS YOUR YEAR
Yours.
When the fatigue was so bad that you just wanted to throw yourself on the couch, what did you do? You kept going until the workout was really over.
You made the decision to wear your cap and goggles every day.
Even when you completely missed the race that could have changed the course of events.
You cried when no one could see you, because the next day you showed up again, disappointed but meaner, demoralized but wanting to reset and start over.
Once again.
You didn’t give yourself excuses. You put swimming not “ahead” but “beyond.” Beyond what was happening to you out of the water, beyond those who told you to let it go.
Beyond.
IT WAS YOUR YEAR, SWIMMING PARENTS.
You’ve struggled every day, every month with bills, with pool fees worth as much as half your monthly household bills. You gave up that “We’ll do it later, but right now we have to buy the race suit” trip.
Every day started earlier and earlier because lunch had to be ready to be taken to school. In the car with the engine running because there are practices and your child to take to the pool.
You live a dream through the goggles of those you have given birth to.
You are no longer even allowed to sit on the pool deck to watch the practice that you’ve worked so hard to make happen, to watch the joy on your child’s face, to watch them grow and develop toward their future selves, because of the pandemic. It means you must trust more than ever that it is happening, that it is happening safely. Maybe you have grown as much as them this year.
IT WAS YOUR YEAR, COACH
For all the times you were criticized, insulted. For those days when Google-trained “experts” wanted to teach you your work.
It’s been your year.
Among tired, bored, unmotivated athletes you found the light in their eyes and transformed it.
You didn’t lose motivation and passion for a job that only those who live off the water can understand.
You were there to pull them out of the water when the race was going badly and you took them away from the crowd to let off steam, to cry. You pushed them not to give up, to try again, to start again until that number on the scoreboard lit up an entire pool.
How many times did you think about giving up? To every day you felt inadequate, the last of the last.
To every single day that you won against your monsters and fought for a love that only you understand.
This has been your year and it will be next year as well. If you continue to follow your instincts, your heart, every day, despite the pain, the people who will leave you, who will betray you. If you can get up every day and put on that chlorine-faded backpack, the next one will be your year too, and the one after that.
You don’t need that medal collecting dust in your drawer.
You have won every day, you have won it all.
Spot on.