Summer Finke - (Author)

The Race That Didn't Go Your Way: How to Respond to Adversity There are few feelings in swimming that sting quite like missing a cut by one hundredth of a second.  You touch the wall, look up at the scoreboard, and immediately begin doing the math. One more dolphin kick off the wall. One cleaner bre...

Why Quiet Confidence Matters Most Before Championship Season  As championship season approaches, the atmosphere around the pool begins to change.  Practices become more intentional. Conversations shift from technique and volume to taper, qualifying times, and championship goals. Swimmers start check...

Falling in Love with Swimming Again - From the Outside  There comes a point for many swimmers when the love story with the sport changes.  For some, it happens after retirement. For others, it begins during college, after years of chasing times, standards, and expectations. The black line that once ...

A Letter to My College Coach  Dear Coach, As athletes, we spend so much of our careers chasing measurable things. We chase best times, national cuts, conference titles, All-American honors, and records. We learn to define success by numbers on a scoreboard and rankings on a psych sheet. For years, I...

School is Out: Surviving Summer Doubles and Maximizing Your Swim Training For many swimmers, the final school bell has rung, backpacks have been tossed aside, and summer has officially arrived. While friends are sleeping in, heading to the beach, or enjoying carefree afternoons, competitive swimmers...

Every Swimming Journey is a Little Different: Focus On Your Own Path Comparison can be one of the fastest ways to lose joy in swimming.  It can happen in a single practice. You may look at your teammate in the next lane holding faster paces; you may see someone your age dropping time every meet whil...

7 Tips for Surviving and Loving Long Course Season The jump from short course to long course season can feel like a completely different sport at first. In short course, you get walls, breaks in the rhythm, and constant chances to reset. In long course, it is just 50 meters of continuous swimming at...

Open Water Swimming: Filling the Gap No lane lines, no walls, no perfectly controlled environment. Just athletes, water, and the elements.  For years, swimming has unintentionally created a divide between the two disciplines: pool swimming and open water swimming. Pool swimming sits at the center of...

Commentary: Swimming Will Always Be There There is a moment, quiet and often unexpected, when it hits you: you’re done.  Maybe it comes after your final race, when the adrenaline fades and the crowd noise dissolves into something distant. Maybe it arrives a few days later, when you wake up and reali...

The Heart of the Sport: Why Swimming Needs More NCAA Energy  Watching the NCAA Championships is something else entirely. Even from thousands of miles away, the energy is unmistakable. You see swimmers cheering for teammates they just raced against, celebrating every personal best, lining up on the b...

Reframing Nostalgia - Something Worth Missing  Every February and March, as conference championship season unfolds across the country, I find myself pulled back in time.  This time of year, my computer is working overtime with the number of tabs open. The livestreams are playing, the psych sheets ar...

The Other Side of Championship Season: An Appreciation of Coaches With conference season here and championship season just around the corner, it’s easy to get caught up in the races, the splits, and the excitement. In the middle of all that energy, it is worth pausing to recognize the heroes behind ...

Fear. One simple word, yet one of the most complex and personal emotions we experience. It shows up in obvious ways: Fear of snakes, fear of heights. But for athletes, it often runs much deeper. Fear of failure. Fear of judgment. Fear of what comes after the so-called failure, when the results are p...

Advice to My Younger Swimmer Self: Appreciate the Journey And suddenly it was over. Twenty-two years of competitive swimming came to an end within a split second on a random Saturday in March. My hand touched the wall for the last time and my competitive swimming journey ended much faster than it be...

How Pre-Race Nerves Can Be Used to a Swimmer's Advantage My heart would race, my knees would feel weak, and my arms would get heavy… but this was not the start of an Eminem song. This was how my body felt every time I was about to dive into the water. The nerves and jitters that came before a race f...

5 Ways to Ensure Your Body is Rested While Traveling to Your Championship Meet Championship meet season is here! It's the time of year when excitement is high and all your hard work and training are behind you (for now). But traveling to a big meet—whether it’s across the country or just down the ro...

A Letter To My Club Coach  Dear Coach,  I used to think gratitude was something you expressed at the end, after the final practice, after the last meet, after the chapter was closed. But swimming doesn’t really work that way.  Neither does your impact.  You were there long before the success, long b...

Goal Setting for Age-Group Swimmers in the New Year  The first practice of the New Year always feels a little different.  The pool deck maintains the same chlorinated smell. The water is just as freezing. The beep from the clock on the wall still seems louder than it should. But something about Janu...

Which Mile Are You Swimming? The Many Ways Distance Swimmers Count a Mile “50, 100, 150, 200… wait, was that the 200 or the 250?”  Whether we like to admit it or not, most distance swimmers have been there. You’re in the middle of racing a mile when your mind suddenly goes blank, and you silently th...

Staying Motivated Through Holiday Training  The holidays are a time filled with warmth, festivities, and celebration. But if you are a swimmer, December and the holidays also come with something else: Holiday training. This time consists of long practices, tired muscles, early alarms, and a heavy st...