My freshman year in high school I was swimming in the biggest meet of the year. I was swimming the 400 free relay. For some reason I wasn't paying attention to how many laps we were swimming (or something...who knows why) and I dove in on Heather Rogers who had only completed her 50. I disqualified the relay. My team was disappointed but not too mean to me. I cried the whole way home.
My Sophomore year in high school I was swimming in the biggest meet of the year. The previous year I had DQ'd an important relay (see story above) and I was being reminded of it by everyone! I starting the back stoke leg of the 200 mixed medley relay, LIKE I ALWAYS DID, but this year I was so afraid of repeating the horrific past. I knew that I just had to do 2 quick laps and i was done...but then the announcer/official guy said that each swimmer will swim 4 laps of the following strokes...then he started the race. So I'm freaking out at this point because what I thought I knew was now derailed. "I'm supposed to do 2, but he said 4, what do I do, what do I do" I kept thinking as I swam. To make a long story short, I DQ'd another relay. And this time everyone was mad at me. Especially Emily Marcheski.
It's frustrating to tell these stories because of how stupid it is or was. It's NOT a difficult thing to know how many laps you're supposed to swim. Especially when you're not new to the sport and you've competed in the same relays for like 8 years (at that time). But I still can't tell you why it was so hard to figure out. Maybe the fact that I always felt nauseous at the smell of chlorine and indoor pools had something to do with it. I was always SO NERVOUS!! Like inconsolably nervous for meets--and I competed for a really long time.
3 comments:
It's too bad that Emily Marcheski just couldn't get over it.
I hope you did well in the following years!
Oh Linda... I can barely STAND to read that, it makes me sick. That is exactly why I couldn't hack it all four years on the swim team. I almost threw up every time.
That's besides the point. I hate reading that because I know how horrible that must of been. And Emily Marcheski was such a bisnitch about it.
Well, Elise did the same thing, didn't she?
I quit swimming before something like that happened to me. But I felt the same thing when I lost our regional championship field hockey game because I missed my shot when we went into a shoot-out. It feels so crappy... but we are all better for experiencing it!!
it's SARAH!!
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