Olivia Smoliga & Lia Neal Giving Back to their Roots With Zoom Q&A’s

Photos Courtesy: Peter H. Bick & Becca Wyant

Olivia Smoliga & Lia Neal were provided with an opportunity to give back to their home club teams with Q&A sessions over Zoom, a chance to connect while being quarantined.

As the world continues to be stuck in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic, it has helped bring some people closer together. With the Olympic Games being pushed back to 2021, the dire need for training has gone down for athletes chasing their Olympic dreams, providing opportunities out of the pool that they wouldn’t normally have.

Americans Olivia Smoliga and Lia Neal participated in Zoom Q&A last month with members of the club teams they grew up with. Smoliga did a Q&A with age-group swimmers in Illinois, while Neal did a session with swimmers from her home club, Asphalt Green Unified Aquatics in New York.

“Illinois Swimming had reached out to my former club coach, Steve Iida at Glenview Titan Aquatic Club (now Glenbrook Swim Club) so they reached out to him and then Steve reached out to me,” Smoliga said. “We were talking through email and then we just did it.”

“I reached out to the administrators I had emailed before and the coaches and asked if I could do something with them,” Neal said. “I was asked to do something with Milo Cavic’s team, King Aquatics, so I figured if I am going to speak with another team, I should speak with my own club team that I grew up swimming on. I see them every so often when I do go home and train and I know they are very receptive to me. I figured this would be the perfect time to talk to them one on one. This opportunity doesn’t come too often and I just wanted to provide them with that. I would have loved to have that resource at that age.”

Neal was able to talk to swimmers from each age group at Asphalt Green, including her 9-year-old nephew Rome.

“It was cute to have him on the call and he asked a good question,” Neal said. “It was ‘how do I warm up at meets?,’ and I said you need to make sure you are ready to perform at your best and be as limber and ready to go as possible, just quick reaction muscles. I was just walking through the things I do in a meet warm-up. Yoga, stretching, jumping rope.”

“We Were Once in Your Shoes”

The sessions were a chance for Smoliga and Neal to give back to their roots by inspiring swimmers from their hometowns. At one point, they were on the other side as age-group swimmers — sitting wide-eyed at swim clinics listening to established Olympians talking about their careers.

Olivia Smoliga representing Glenview Titan Aquatic Club at the 2013 US Nationals. Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

“I went to a Northwestern swim camp up in Evanston and I don’t know how old I was but Amanda Weir came to talk to us,” Smoliga said. “We were in a classroom and she was telling us she listens to Reggae before she swims, that she eats a dozen eggs a week, I still remember it to this day. It was really meaningful to me because I wanted to be in her position one day so of course I took everything she said as bible.

“And lo and behold in 2016 I was on an Olympic team with her. I told these kids the same thing — this Olympian came to talk to us, I was so inspired. I told them at the end of the call, maybe we can be on an Olympic team together, or cross paths in the future. If you really want to do it, anything is possible. I remember everything every Olympian told me.

“I’ve been raised in Illinois, I swam club in Illinois, and actually a handful of swimmers from the now Glenbrook Swim Club were on the call,” Smoliga continued. “It was like I was giving a virtual speaking clinic so-to-say. It means more coming from Illinois — it is the best state! You know how it is.”

“I went to a clinic that Ian Crocker and Josh Davis did,” Neal said. “I got to social kick with Ian and I think he even remembers that because we talked about it years later. It was really cool to be able to be on the other end of this. I was second in his lane and I was right behind him. It wasn’t a hard practice but I was keeping up pretty well and I remember he mentioned that like ‘hey, you’re pretty fast.’

“I would absorb everything because technique was a major thing that I paid attention to throughout my swim career, I wasn’t thinking ‘when am I going to be in that position in leading a clinic?’ I was just learning as much as possible.”

Smoliga is aiming for her second Olympic team next year while Neal is pushing for her third trip to the Games. They are both three years out of college and have had tremendous success in the sport.

Lia Neal representing Asphalt Green Unified Aquatics at the 2013 US Nationals. Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

What stuck out most to them in the Q&A’s was getting asked questions that turned out to be more complex than they thought.

“I think the questions that are always harder to answer are when kids ask ‘what do you do when you plateau? or have a hard season? or don’t reach the times you want to reach?'” Smoliga said. “Those are hard for me to answer because not everyone is the same. The only answer I can really give is ‘if it doesn’t work out for you the first season if not the second season, if not the third, it might work out the fourth season so just keep going and not give up.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself because I consider myself a late bloomer. I wasn’t really good until I was 14 or 15 and then I took off about 17/18 coming into college. My success was very compact and it grew and grew and grew. I feel like it is still growing. I think kids tend to get discouraged because they are comparing themselves to everyone around them rather than focusing on their own journey so that is the most important piece of advice that stuck out during the conversation.”

“One of the high schoolers asked what is the difference between swimming in college and how do you prepare for that,” Neal said. “That was really relevant for them because they’re on the cusp of college. That was a question I really had to think about because that is such a huge difference that no one really prepares you for. I was like ‘I’m sorry this sounds so cliche but you have to figure it out on your own.’ You just have to go into it knowing college swimming is really different and will expect so much out of you. Not only are you going from high school to college and you are being given all these new freedoms and you have to make all these decisions for yourself, but in addition you are also swimming for your school and representing them.

“In addition to a whole new training regimen, you also have to figure out ways you are putting your best self out there and you can represent your school the best way possible. A lot of the supplementary stuff like nutrition, because you don’t have your parents cooking for you anymore, or rationing out food, or recovery, because no one is telling you to go to sleep at a certain time or just making sure you are balancing your academics along with practice and making sure you get enough rest as well. It’s just a lot to think of, and a lot of trial-and-error, especially your freshman year. That was a simple question but there are a lot of layers to it.”

Olivia Smoliga & Lia Neal’s Journey

Olivia Smoliga & Lia Neal at team USA staging camp in Singapore for the 2019 World Championships. Photo Courtesy: Olivia Smoliga

Smoliga and Neal are quarantined in separate states — Smoliga is in Illinois at her parents’ house, Neal is in her childhood home in Brooklyn — but they’ve kept in touch. Most of the conversations involve lighthearted memes.

“We are both on Instagram a lot so we DM each other mostly funny memes or good music,” Smoliga said. “We don’t really talk about swimming much.”

They have been friends for nearly ten years now, starting with their first international trip together, the 2011 Junior Worlds in Peru. Their friendship has taken them to an Olympic Games, two World Championships, and a spot on Team FINIS.

Olivia Smoliga & Lia Neal representing Team FINIS. Photo Courtesy: Olivia Smoliga

While they are quarantined, they are excited to connect with the next generation of swimmers. Smoliga, even if she wasn’t quarantined, said she would have still done the Q&A in the middle of training for Olympic Trials.

“To me I was just talking to a younger version of myself,” Smoliga said. “That’s kind of how I see it when I do clinics and I get to travel — giving advice or things I wish I would have known when I was younger. I view it as I’m talking to a younger me.”

Neal used the opportunity to share how she has kept busy, including starting a YouTube channel, researching things she wouldn’t have time to do during training and practicing as a DJ.

“I have been kept busy with using it as time to practice DJ’ing,” Neal said. “I bought my DJ set at the end of last year and have not used it as much. I’ve also been researching and reading up on anything I’ve been curious about and this time has been the perfect time to work on YouTube and filming and editing because that is time consuming in itself. When I mentioned I had a YouTube channel, I noticed some of the kids faces lit up, I guess they were surprised I had a YouTube channel.”

All in all, Smoliga and Neal loved reconnecting with their clubs.

“It’s nice because not only are you feeling like you are giving back to the swimming community but it is a point of reflection,” Smoliga said. “It was really cool, especially in your hometown. It is pretty special. I think a lot of my friends who are pro swimmers have had experiences like this already but I guess there are a lot more opportunities now. Every tidbit of positivity is great for a younger swimmer.”

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