I like to complain about how much I hated swimming throughout various stages of my life, but for every bad memory of swimming there are plenty of good memories I would never want to give up. In fact, swimming didn’t really become a burden to me until my high school emphasized competition, sapping what fun I had with it. Before that, it was merely a summer social activity.
In those days, when Lindsay was still on the diving team, she, Whitney, and I (and sometimes all Valerie) might spend the entire day playing Mario Party after practice as our swim suits slowly dried. When time for the afternoon practice rolled around, we would still be in our suits and ready to go.
During my freshman and sophomore years, I swam with my private high school team during the summers. Even then, though, I took occasional breaks from the much more rigorous stuff my coach lined up for me by swimming at the lazy recreational league practices instead. Sometimes, I even managed to convince my little sister to come with me. On the few occasions that she did, we would always have interesting conversations in the mornings on the way there and back, chugging along in my old gray Volvo. There aren’t very many things we have in common, even today, but I’m still really grateful for every one of those mornings we had together.
In my junior year, the Signal Mountain Swim Club got a new swim coach. In stark contrast to its previous coach, who tended to run practices like those of the local private high school he was also the coach of, Coach Doug largely emphasized fun over competition. It was only a recreational league after all. The Signal Mountain Swim Club was already at the top of the league, so there wasn’t really a higher status it could reach anyway.
Under Doug’s leadership, our workouts were generally littered with oddball routines, such as “Hawaiian breaststroke”, an awkward feet-first maneuver, and “butterfly dives”, which basically meant jumping off the bottom of the pool and pretending to be Superman. No, really. It’s a thing.
To signal our starts off the blocks during practices, instead of the usual whistle, Doug would yell ridiculous phrases, including “To the batmobile!” and “Exelsior!” Sometimes he brought a water blaster, explaining that if he could hit us with a stream of water, we were too slow off the blocks. He brought a plastic light saber to practice and challenged the smaller kids to duels. He challenged the older kids to kickboard chucking and skipping competitions. When we won meets, we took a day off swim practice to play dodgeball or sharks and minnows.
In 2005, Tennessee was the number two ranked swimming state in the country, behind only California- the state where most of our Olympic water polo players hail from. Because of this, all the other swimmers in the area who cared about rankings were off at the private school practices, so I had very little competition when it came to recreational league sharks and minnows.
There are many variations of this game, but our version consisted of lining up the entire swim team on one end as “minnows” except for one unlucky person- usually the person who showed up the latest- who swam out to the center to be the “shark”. Doug would declare that the game would continue until no minnows remained, then set us loose. We all jumped in and scrambled across the pool at the same time, hoping not to get wrestled to the surface and tagged by sharks. Those who were tagged would remain in the water, becoming sharks themselves in subsequent rounds. Every round, more minnows became sharks, and the chances for each minnow to survive would exponentially decrease.
Unless, of course, one of the minnows was an All-American swimmer. Well, seventeen one hundredths of a second short of being an All-American swimmer, but I was at the peak of my physical strength in those summers. Even on normal practice days, when all the other swimmers were worn out and ready to go home, I sometimes stayed for the second practice simply because I didn’t want to get out of the pool. Sprinting a single length over and over was nothing compared to the conditioning provided by the private high school practices, and I could do it all day long. I must have looked like Michael Phelps to those kids.
During games of sharks and minnows, some of the tougher kids lasted well into the final rounds, but none of them had anything close to my conditioning. After a number of rounds, I would inevitably resurface to find that I was the only one that made it. I’d climb out and turn around to find myself the only minnow, up against the entire rest of the Signal Mountain Swim Club.
I don’t often enjoy finding myself at the center of attention, but this is one of those rare exceptions. I could see Doug grinning at me; I’m sure he loved this part as much as I did. “Ready?” I fastened my goggles, grinned back at him, and nodded.
“Exelsior!”
I would make a show of pacing a bit as all the eyes in the pool followed me, then I’d find an open hole and dive right in. As soon as I hit the water, I could feel every body begin to converge on my location, but it made no difference. For as fast as any of them could move, I was ten times faster. I could whip around and flutter kick to safety within a moment of feeling someone’s hand try to grab me.
For some reason, nobody ever seemed to catch on to the fact that a body of water has three dimensions. Though Ender managed to figure it out, the swimmers always came at me from the same horizontal angle. No matter how surrounded I was, unless I was on the bottom of the pool, there was always an escape route both above and below me. Much like the stereotypical whale, I resurfaced for only the briefest of moments before diving back down to safety.
Before I took any medical training, I used to challenge myself to breath-holding competitions. My record is well over three minutes, though I later stopped trying to improve it when I learned that permanent brain damage occurs after only four. Back then, however, holding my breath for two minutes was nothing. Because minnows can only be tagged above water, sometimes I’d allow myself to simply sink to the bottom and hold on to the drain pipe and grin at the little kids as they tried to tug me up until they had to go up for air.
I’ve mentioned this before, but playing games with little sisters teaches you to be aware of how restless the other party is. Even a game like sharks and minnows can become torturous if the players feel that they are being forced to play. Though it is fun to say that the game will go on until they catch me, realistically, I could have kept that game going for the next several hours before tiring out, but I’ve always been a fan of quitting while you’re ahead.
You could always tell when practice was almost over, because swimmers from the next practice would begin making their way in. Though I enjoyed this time, this was my signal to finally allow a group of the smaller kids to drag me to the surface.
When they finally caught me, it was always a cause for celebration. “I got him! I got him! Did you see that?” The little kids all got so overly excited when their efforts paid off. Though I’m sure they were thoroughly tired out, the kids who caught me would always seem to have enough energy to bounce off to their parents, who were patiently waiting for them. As their parents dried them off with warm towels, they gloated about their great struggle and eventual victory, and it always made me smile.
At the end of the year, it was truly surprising to me when Doug gave me the coach’s award. He even made a whole speech about how I was a good motivation and a good role model (and single), but it didn’t really feel like it to me; I was just being myself. Looking back, I’d like to think that I was so relieved and happy to be at those recreational league practices rather than my rigorous high school ones that I made it fun for everyone else.
To this day, sharks and minnows is a game that I have never won, but it’s probably the only game that I will always be happy to lose.
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