The Underwater Window by Dan Stephenson

Author:Dan Stephenson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2012-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Swimming is a sport for everybody, young and old, slow or fast. Age group competitions start with the “8 and under” age group, and toddlers have competed in these events. Masters swimming competitions are for the elderly, beginning at age 19. FINA keeps world records for masters, and there are records held by swimmers in the 100-104 age group. The number of competitors is small, but the competition is fierce in that age group.

In swimming, you know exactly where you stand. Performances are measured objectively and the results are there for everyone to see. In some sports, players who deserve to see action ride the bench because the coach doesn’t notice them, or plays favorites. Not in swimming. Some sports pivot heavily on subjective calls made by human referees which are sometimes erroneous. This rarely happens in swimming.

There are all kinds of targets for swimmers to aim at. There are world records, national records, state records, varsity records, meet records and pool records. In addition to records, there are also qualifying standards, or “cuts,” for various events. All of these are objective measurements of achievement, and there is always something within reach.

The universal standard of individual achievement is the “personal best.” All swimmers know their personal best in their favorite event. Beating your PB is a lauded achievement. There are also goals that a swimmer can set, which may or may not correspond to records or cuts or PBs. Some of the greatest performances in history were swum by people whose goals went beyond world records.

There was a kid on my high school team named Bruno who was a terrible swimmer by most standards. I watched him underwater one time and his stroke was a disaster. Bruno was about 4’6” tall, his growth having been stunted by a childhood disease. The first time Bruno swam the 50 free, he took about 100 strokes per length and didn’t even break a minute. He listened as the coach told us all to set goals that seemed just out of reach, slightly audacious. He set a goal of 40 seconds in the 50. The fastest swimmers in the state were swimming the 50 in about 20 seconds. Bruno swam the 50 in every meet, because he couldn’t swim anything else, and his PB kept coming down. Everyone on the team knew Bruno’s goal time. When he went 39.96 at the conference meet, he got the loudest cheer of anyone at the meet, and was the happiest kid in the pool. He came in last in his heat, and the guys on the other teams had no idea what the cheering was about.

Swimming is a sport in which physically-challenged folks can participate. There was a blind swimmer on one of the high school teams in our state. He had a teammate at each end of the pool tap him with a pole when it was time to do a flip turn. His flip looked like everyone else’s. There have been deaf swimmers who made it to the Olympics.

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