My Dilemma

How’s your new hobby going?

Have you taken up training for a half or full marathon yet?

Have you become a yoga teacher on the side of your fulltime job? Spin instructor? Coach? Trainer?

………

I swam in college. I loved swimming… until I got to college. I was also a little good at it… until I got to college.

Somewhere in transition, my passion for the sport was either ripped apart or simply just fell into six thousand pieces.

I thought I went into college open-minded. But truthfully, I was stressed. Too stressed about a long-distance boyfriend at the time, what my new teammates would think of me, how I could fit in with this new team that seemed so… unfamiliar and intimidating. I was so unhappy my first year.

Like many freshmen, I wanted to transfer at first – solely because of my sport. I loved the school and my classes, but the sport experience just didn’t feel right. It didn’t click with me. I stuck it out, figuring it would click eventually.

I’m not sure that it ever did.

…It’s been years since I’ve been in college. I still think about how my experience would have been different, had I ended up somewhere else.

College athletes… We either loved it or hated it. I loved being a student athlete, I loved the perks I got, the Nike gear I got with our school logo on it…

I just didn’t love the sport anymore. It wasn’t just swimming anymore. There was so much more to it, and with a co-ed team that practiced together… There was so much drama. So much drama. I’m sure others can attest to this, if they had a similar experience.

………

I was, however, still lucky. I had a few good people that got me through. A few people who I became so close with, they became a part of my daily life outside of swimming.

Swimming became something that just… helped pay for school. It was like my job. I survived it fine enough. But swimming in college was not the “best years of my life” experience that some people claim about their college sports. I’ll claim high school and my lucky one year in grad school (at a different school) after college – those were my best swimming years I had. I am eternally grateful for those.

………

To any college athletes that loved their experience: You are so lucky. Those who loved their experience never seem to share as often as those who didn’t, and I’d love to one day read or hear about a college sports experience that still leaves a warm spot in someone’s chest. I’d love to live vicariously through someone’s fond memories in a sport they didn’t fall out of love with, at such a developmental period in their life.

A sport shapes an athlete. I believe that. And I believe all of us former college athletes (or any level athlete) carry tendencies with us for the rest of our life.

………

…In reference to how I opened… I teach swim lessons on Saturdays, now. I teach to young kids, usually ages 3-8, to help them get comfortable in the water. I also run. And lift weights. And run some more… I’ve finished more ultramarathons than regular marathons. By choice, yes. Something about a 50-mile-long trail race just gets me.

The weirdest thing about life after a college sport was how much free time I had. I can sleep in until 7:30 a.m. before work? Yes please. I don’t have to workout today? Okay. I can just… go for a chill walk today? Say less.

But also – I can run from sunrise to sunset, if I want? Also yes. It’s strange, the ways we change from who we used to be. Or at least, who we thought we were.

………

I think I am thankful for my time as a college athlete. In retrospect, I wish I was the person I am today to go through it — these days, I find myself empathizing with and feeling more like who I was in high school; it’s almost like my true self was buried for a bit, and I’ve been slowly uncovering her.

I like her better now.