What Happens After You’re Done Swimming? GoSwim to Host Zoom Featuring Powerful Voices
Every season, hundreds of swimmers swimmers wrap up their competitive careers at the conclusion of college, high school or some other point of their choosing. Many struggle to find purpose and motivation once they finish racing, and many require months or years of soul-searching as they rebalance their lives.
GoSwim will be highlighting that challenging transitional period in a Zoom meeting taking place Tuesday, May 12 at 1 p.m. ET. The virtual event will host an Olympic champion, a Paralympian-turned-college coach and a pair of former Division III swimmers who have created a compelling animated film chronicling that period.
The two well-known figures in the aquatics world are Greg Louganis, a four-time Olympic winner in diving. “Few athletes have had to navigate identity, meaning, and reinvention as publicly as Greg has,” according to the GoSwim advertisement. Next is Dave Denniston, the former Auburn swimmer and World Championships team member who rebounded from a major sledding accident to become a Paralympic swimmer and eventually head coach at the University of Wyoming. Those two will be joined by the creators of One: The Animated Film, Aaron Cole and Thomas E. Richner.
According to the film’s official synopsis, it “explores the emotional journey of athletes, capturing both the thrill of peak performance and the challenges of transitioning out of competitive sports,” according to its official synopsis. The film shows a former collegiate swimmer figurately trapped underwater by the weight of his swimming accomplishments. The film provides an optimistic and hopeful message as it “vividly portrays the camaraderie, triumphs, and intense adrenaline of competition, alongside the profound mental health challenges that can often follow once it ends.”
The 11-minute film does not include any narration or conversation, but it conveys its message through graphics, showing skills Richner has picked up from his career as an animator on The Simpsons. The character in the video is pulled toward swimming after enduring bullying as a youth, and he gains formative memories from his years competing in high school and college. He spends years sharpening his tools for peak performance, only for that to become a weight on his life following retirement.
From the film’s description:
Regardless of the area, the world of “sport” is core to human culture. It can be an escape from poverty, family dysfunction, abuse, bullying, etc. It is a haven for discipline, social life and achievement.
With many collegiate athletes devoting much of their adolescent life to their sport, it is often a culture shock when the structured foundations of their chosen sport ends and they are forced to find new outlets for their personal growth and purpose. Very often, ONE’s identity can be wrapped up in whatever phase of life we are in at the time whether it’s a sport, a job, a relationship. When life takes us in a new direction, the challenge of finding new purpose and meaning can be very real and often difficult. Our hope is that ONE can both entertain and spark some discussion about transitioning successfully through stages of our lives.
Cole and Richner, who once swam for GoSwim founder Glenn Mills, conceived the film while meeting for dinner during a homecoming weekend at Denison. “We hope that it sparks discussions about mental health and dealing with life after sports, transitioning from ONE stage of life to the next, a topic we don’t discuss enough as young adults,” they wrote.
Learn more about the Zoom here, and sign up here. The Zoom continues a regular series in which Mills and GoSwim engage the swimming community in improvement-focused conversations surrounding the sport.