It was a cold November morning and I was racing in the 2014 Florida Swimming State Championships preliminaries. After training hard for a year, I was confident I would achieve my goal of making US Junior Nationals in the 200 individual medley. How could I not? I gave everything in practice, every day, and I was hopeful my hard work would pay off.
Unfortunately, my best was not enough. I barely placed among the top eight finalists who return for evening championship swims. I lost all hope of achieving a Junior National time and my attitude towards this season went down the drain. I talked myself into believing I had no chance of achieving my goal.
For the first ten years of my swimming career, I swam under one coach, practically a father