Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Photo Courtesy: Brian Jenkins - UVM Athletics

By Jamie Kolar, Swimming World College Intern.

Love hurts. It hurts, and it isn’t always fair, to say the least. We don’t always get to choose what we fall in love with: normally, it chooses us. However, when it finds us, we do get to choose how we show that love.

Swimming is an all or nothing sport. Either you love it or you hate it. There really is no in-between feeling when it comes to the water. It requires too much time and too much of ourselves to be impartial or neutral. Most of us start and continue to swim because we love it; however, this star-crossed love is not always the case.

There are several instances when we might have fallen out of love with swimming for various reasons yet think that things will change with a situational change, but the reality is this: it comes down to if you truly are able to put you heart into the sport and everything that entails.

You think that college will help you fall back in love.

2016 Big East Swimming and Diving Championship on Feb. 27, 2016 at Nassau County Aquatic Center in East Meadow, New York.

Photo Courtesy: Villanova Athletics Media Relations

This is an idealistic thought. If you have grown to have any sort of distaste for swimming in high school, college really won’t change that. College swimming is an entirely different ball game that exhausts you to your very core. Nothing will quite prepare you for that level of fatigue, hard work and time-commitment; that’s okay if you are ready and willing to give that much of yourself to the sport.

The new team setting may help you along the way, but it won’t change your outlook on the sport at its core. To reach your full potential in a collegiate setting, you cannot be anything less than in love with swimming; otherwise, it will not be an enjoyable experience.

After a break, you don’t feel an itch to get back in the water.

Photo Courtesy: Jeremy Crawford

After a long season, it is not unusual for swimmer to take two weeks to a month off. This break allows us to reset our minds and bodies. By the end of our designated break, we are itching to jump back into the pool to start another great season.

However, this is not the case for some. They find the break to be too short and dread the day that they have to start training for another season. Swimming has become a habit of necessity – similarly to going to the dentist – instead of being an activity of passion.

So what is a swimmer to do when these things happen? Falling back in love with swimming is challenging. You have to remember why you started swimming and why you want to go to practice everyday. If those reasons don’t have anything to do with the love of the sport, then it may be time to redirect your attention to something that you are passionate about.

So, what is love?

Photo Courtesy: Christa Weaver

Swimming is an acquired taste that can be addicting. At its best, it consumes all of you. You think about swimming when you are not at the pool and are found watching swimming and reading about it when you are away from the pool. It is love. Love is not always easy and can be frustrating at times, but we are thankful that we have found something that we are passionate about and can always return to.

Love varies from person to person, but at its very core, love is the giving of yourself. True love involves letting yourself be vulnerable to the things that scare you the most. It is the willingness to be better than who you are right now for the betterment of something or someone else. It is shocking, chaotic, and uncontrollable. Yet, despite the world wind, it is somehow beautiful at the same time.

When you do what you love and love what you do, you can never go wrong.

All commentaries are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Swimming World Magazine nor its staff.

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Jaroslaw Stachowicz

5 years ago

Worry not. It gest bigger in “Streettolly called desire ” !