Swim Stories

My swim story is from my freshman year of NAIA National Champs @ the Palo Alto pool in San Antonio, March 1996. I had been unbeaten in the 500 free up to that point so far, including the preliminaries. We dove in for the finals, and right off the dive/first 25 the two swimmers on either side of me went almost a bodylength ahead, and gradually got a little more. This in a way was startling to say the least. I was actually behind for the first time in the 500. We continued that way lap after lap, turn after turn, with no changes of position forward or backward in relation to each other. I was thinking wow, this will be kinda nice...my first swim in college, and to take 3rd place...that great! Going into the 400 point, I then saw my team captain standing tall in our team area of the bleachers with his hands up in the air basically saying "WTF? Get on it boy!!!" I thought about it and came in hard into the wall at the 400, gave a couple SDKs and went for it. The other 2 swimmers ahead of me caught on quick though and also started going for the finish. At the 475, I was still in 3rd place by about 1/2 bodylength, but was determined to try for the win. The true acceleration didn't happen until the last 10-15 yards of the race as I pulled even with the other 2 swimmers. We all 3 nailed the finish like it was a 50 Free final - all basically simultaneous touching. None of us knew who had one the race until we lifted our heads over the bulkhead to see the clock. It was me!!! 4:35.43, with 2nd and 3rd places within 0.10 seconds back. I was out of the pool so fast, jumping around excited, even though I should have been exhausted at this point, it was the best thing in the world to me. To this day, it was my most exciting race I've swum, so much that I remember my time 4:35.43, and splits, 52.7, 56.5, 56.5, 56.0, 53.0. It was also the closest I'd ever had my last 100 split to my first 100 split. My only wish is that someone had videotaped the race, because I would have loved to watch it from an "outsiders" view.

My swim story is from my freshman year of NAIA National Champs @ the Palo Alto pool in San Antonio, March 1996. I had been unbeaten in the 500 free up to that point so far, including the preliminaries. We dove in for the finals, and right off the dive/first 25 the two swimmers on either side of me went almost a bodylength ahead, and gradually got a little more. This in a way was startling to say the least. I was actually behind for the first time in the 500. We continued that way lap after lap, turn after turn, with no changes of position forward or backward in relation to each other. I was thinking wow, this will be kinda nice...my first swim in college, and to take 3rd place...that great! Going into the 400 point, I then saw my team captain standing tall in our team area of the bleachers with his hands up in the air basically saying "WTF? Get on it boy!!!" I thought about it and came in hard into the wall at the 400, gave a couple SDKs and went for it. The other 2 swimmers ahead of me caught on quick though and also started going for the finish. At the 475, I was still in 3rd place by about 1/2 bodylength, but was determined to try for the win. The true acceleration didn't happen until the last 10-15 yards of the race as I pulled even with the other 2 swimmers. We all 3 nailed the finish like it was a 50 Free final - all basically simultaneous touching. None of us knew who had one the race until we lifted our heads over the bulkhead to see the clock. It was me!!! 4:35.43, with 2nd and 3rd places within 0.10 seconds back. I was out of the pool so fast, jumping around excited, even though I should have been exhausted at this point, it was the best thing in the world to me. To this day, it was my most exciting race I've swum, so much that I remember my time 4:35.43, and splits, 52.7, 56.5, 56.5, 56.0, 53.0. It was also the closest I'd ever had my last 100 split to my first 100 split. My only wish is that someone had videotaped the race, because I would have loved to watch it from an "outsiders" view.