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This pool is my soul, and the slight, gentle waves are the beating of my heart. I stand on the deck looking down at the clear, calm water, and raise my hands above my head. I dive into the water, smooth and straight like an arrow. I enter the water without a splash, and glide underwater, feeling the cool water on my skin, and the scent of chlorine in the air. I feel powerful, immortal, and completely at peace. The tables for swim lessons are lined up on the deck. The tables, where I had some of my first ever swim lessons, and where I will one day teach swim lessons. The blocks screwed in behind the lanes remind me of my first novice swim meets. The old lane lines, blue and white twisted rope, are mangled and pulled apart. The red and white
buoys are faded and scratched from being pulled on by age group swimmers trying to get ahead when they thought the coaches weren’t looking. In this pool I was a tadpole, junior otter, and now a high school swimmer. The pool is my second home, and the team is my second family. If there is anything going on in my life that’s hard or stressful, I know where to go. The clear, still water is like the eye of a hurricane, a place where I can relax, enjoy myself, and not worry about the storm. Without the pool, I would not be the person I am today. This pool has shaped my personality. Making me a more dedicated and committed person, with every morning that I wake up at five for morning practice. Making me a calmer and more pleasant person, with every day that I let my worries and problems flow off of me like the water. Making me a stronger person, mentally and physically, with every practice where I kept going, no matter how hard it was. This pool is me, and if I could be anywhere, I would always choose River Road Pool.
In the short story The Swimmer by John Cheever, one of the dominant themes is the passage of time. In this short story time seems to pass as reality does with us unaware of its passing. The main character is the protagonist hero, Neddy Merrill who embarks on a traditional theme of a homeward journey. The scene opens on a warm mid-summer day at an ongoing pool party with Neddy and his wife Lucinda. The pool is “fed by an artesian well with a high iron content, was a pale shade of green.
The smell of the restaurants faded and the new, refreshing aroma of the sea salt in the air took over. The sun’s warmth on my skin and the constant breeze was a familiar feeling that I loved every single time we came to the beach. I remember the first time we came to the beach. I was only nine years old. The white sand amazed me because it looked like a wavy blanket of snow, but was misleading because it was scorching hot. The water shone green like an emerald, it was content. By this I mean that the waves were weak enough to stand through as they rushed over me. There was no sense of fear of being drug out to sea like a shipwrecked sailor. Knowing all this now I knew exactly how to approach the beach. Wear my sandals as long as I could and lay spread out my towel without hesitation. Then I’d jump in the water to coat myself in a moist protective layer before returning to my now slightly less hot towel. In the water it was a completely different world. While trying to avoid the occasional passing jellyfish, it was an experience of
"Swimmer knew a few ways to kill the soul of an enemy and many ways to protect your own. His spells portrayed the spirit as a frail thing, constantly under attack and in need of strength, always threatening to die inside you. Inman found this notion dismal indeed, since he had been taught by sermon and hymn to hold as truth that the soul of man never dies”(14).
At the heart of the Pool are its sweet characters, quite imperfect, funny, relentlessly honest, and in various stages of struggle and healing. It was born for the most part in my sister Diane Hope’s living room, as a byproduct of the way we dealt with our issues – through humor and an incessant need to speak truthfully about the hard stuff. We allowed ourselves to play, braid our unraveled ends into beautiful bows, and wear them proudly. My exaggeration of the characters’ shortcomings, both physical and emotional, only made them more lovable. Like us, they’d be the first to laugh at themselves.
As a Senior on my Water Polo team, it is important for me to act as a leader. Incoming Freshmen look up to the Seniors they play with, and my teammates and coaches rely on me to help resolve disputes, and facilitate practice. The Clovis Unified School District has several schools with great athletic programs. Unfortunately, Clovis East, my school, has always been the runt of the litter. I have played Water Polo at East since I was in the seventh grade, and never once have we beaten a Clovis school in a League game. The whole culture at East has always held a defeated attitude towards other Clovis schools. We shouldn’t beat them, so therefore we can’t. However, the attitude is changing, we are becoming much more confident as a team, and we have
iving up my week and weekend nights for swim practice was something I was used to by the time I started high school. Swimming, was my calling, and with that came many sacrifices. Practices were everyday, Monday through Friday and sometimes on Saturdays, and consisted of countless sets of sprinting, kicking and pulling. The only thing that kept us stable during practice was counting down the time on the clock, “Just thirty more minutes, and I can relax for another twenty hours.” From there I would go home in time to shower and finish homework. Finishing what I needed to do before midnight was considered luck. The cycle repeated itself as I would get up the next day and do it again. However, there are many other aspects to this sport besides
Once upon a time, I qualified for the Tae Kwon Do State Championships, to go to the Tae Kwon Do Junior Olympics in Orlando, Florida. It was my second year at the Jr. Olympics, and I was competing in two events. Sparring and forms. Forms has always been my favorite, partly because I was pretty good at doing them. Sparring was okay. I guess.
Rough, strong hands clutched the sides of her waist and she was pulled backwards. The water was so much colder than she had expected, but balanced evenly with the dry air. Her nose filled with water and her blurry eyes registered the streaks of sunlight woven throughout the crystal pool. It was so beautiful, and it could have been even more beautiful if she wasn't gasping for
Swimming has been my whole life, since I jumped into the pool for the very first time. I loved every aspect of swimming from the adrenaline running through my body during my races and getting to spend even more time with my friends and my sister, and the stress of big meets coming up in the schedule. Except everything didn't go according to plan after the first day of school when I got home and I saw my parents sitting by my sister on the coach and my sister was crying.
The ocean is a mysterious thing, with depths so deep you can not fathom what lies at the bottom. I step toward the water, dipping one toe in before I stumble through the almost crystal clear water. The water was not as warm as I had thought. A shiver runs up my spine, and I feel the hairs on my arms stand up. I tried to put my mind on something else.
I run fast to the water to be confronted by rocks. Once standing on them, they act as tiny foot masseuses. I feel that I have reached my happy place, for that I am at a state of maximum comfort. The Earth has blessed this place. I float in the water on my floaty like a rubber duck in a bathtub and look up at the grayed sky.
Out to the arms of the lake, we stared and admired in every manner to cherish and remember it like a picture that never change. I held her hand and began walking towards the dock, which extended shortly into the water face. The dock was of metal, not sleek but shinny, not clean but unnoticed as we looked into...
Swimming has done for me… Swimming from day one was the hardest sport I have ever done. Never before in my life had I been able to move 50 yards and be in pain. The very act of swimming a lap was exhausting. My parents began their divorce at the same time swim season started, and so it was a nice release.
As a 16 year old girl, I got my first job working at the local pool during the summer break. The pool was the place to be to get cooled off from those boiling sun rays. It was the perfect hang out for water games and fun. This was the description of a perfect job full of suntans and cute boys, or at least I thought.
Have you ever been scared or afraid about trying or doing something new; I have. Swimming has always been a fun, exciting and enjoyable activity and hobby I enjoy doing a lot. On a sunny and warm Saturday afternoon. My mom and I went to an indoor pool in California called the Hayward Plunge. I was having so much fun until my mom asked me to take the 11ft deep swimming test.