Coach

When I was six years old, I joined the swim team in my city. I remember sitting in school all day, day dreaming about getting in the pool as soon as school was over. I couldn't wait to get to practice; and one of the reasons I couldn't wait was my coach. For the first few years I swam, I love my coach. He was nice, funny, made me work hard (but not too hard), and he always made me feel like I was great. He was the perfect coach. Then when I was a bout 10 years old, he started to change. However, his attitude towards the rest of the team was the same, he only acted differently towards me. I had been working hard and getting faster and he started to get excited. I was only 10, and he was making me get up in the morning before school to swim, and then continue my two hours of practice after school, and I was doing all of this with the high school team. My coach was still nice, and still funny, but he was working me too hard, and making me feel like I still wasn't good enough. I cried myself to sleep every night but knew that I had to get up the next morning to keep on going. I was raised not to be a quitter, and I wasn't going to give up. I kept on going strong through the training, and gritted my teeth through the grueling mental aspect of it all. By the time I was 13 and in 8th grade, I was faster than all the girls on the high school team and even some of the boys. I was so excited to go to high school and swim on the team there. I knew it would be tough, but I'd been doing all the same work since I was 10. Just as I thought it would be, the swim team in high school was great. For my first two years that is. At the end of my sophomore year in high school, my coach called a meeting to tell us all that he wouldn't be coming back to coach the following year because he was moving to Texas. I was torn down the middle emotionally; a part of me was happy that he was leaving because of all the nights he made me cry, but a larger part of me was crushed that he wasn't going to be back. He asked me to stay after the meeting, and I was afraid he was just going to make me cry again, and he did, but this time the tears were different. He told me that I was special to him, and that even though it may have seemed at times like he didn't like me or wanted me to be in pain, he only acted the way he did because he knew that I could succeed. He said that he would never waste so much time and energy on someone who didn't have potential, and he only kept after me because he believed in me. And he finished by telling me to remember that "practice doesn't make perfect....perfect practice makes perfect."

I have been swimming ever since, but haven't swam as well for any other coach since he left. Though he may have seemed almost kin to satin at times, he was a great inspiration to me, and taught me that I can do anything I set my mind to. He was a great coach and a great person and I hope that one day I will have the same effect on a child that he had on me.

-- Tess Anderson, Florida Atlantic University