How will your presence enrich our community?


I stare at the bottom of a pool focused on one blue line for two straight hours. Yes, I turn my head to breathe and catch a .05 second glimpse of what’s happening around the pool, but that’s pretty much it. Doing 7,000 yards of swimming in two hour doesn’t leave much time to talk…BUT when I do get those sparing two or three minutes, I spit out as much as I can before my head is submerged under water again. And sometimes I find myself being cut off by my coach’s obnoxious and irritating voice telling me about the next set. Ugh!
But as a swimmer, I know why I do it. It’s the time on the scoreboard that means everything.



“Coach Mark! Mark, what’d I go?” I nervously questioned, as I got out of the water from my third time trial of the same race that day. The 100 free. My baby.
“You went…” He paused as he looked down at his stopwatch.
“What?” I asked as I hopped out of the water, lactic acid accumulating in my body.
“You got it! 51.71! You got the state record!” exclaimed my coach as he opened his arms for a hug.
“Yes! Thank you so much, Mark!”
“Haley, it was all your work in the pool. I had nothing to do with it,” he said.



Those four numbers brought the biggest smile to my face. Those numbers changed my mood. This numbers is what it comes down to. I wake up at 4:50 a.m. for practice, get through tough classes, just to workout again for another two hours. Feeling my body ache each time I get ready for another swim and give away three hours a day away for six days a week, swimming 7,000 yards per practice. I cancel plans and rearrange my life. All for 51.71 seconds.