|
|
|
|
| |
 Home
Sports
Tales
of Adventure |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
A Sports Story
by Lynn Jaffee
|
|
| |
| |
When I was growing up my parents made me join the local swim team. During the summer, weekday mornings were filled with practices and afternoons were spent swimming with friends or playing cards on the pool deck. Every Saturday, the whole family piled into the car to drive to a competitive meet with another swim team.
I was the slowest swimmer on our team. To make matters worse, my coach almost always put me in the 100 yard backstroke, an event I could barely finish. I can remember hearing feeble applause as I finished the race, not because I had swum well, but simply because I had finished. By that time the other swimmers were already out of the pool and drying off.
Clearly sports, at least swimming, were not doing much for my self-esteem. When I was eleven, however, something changed. One Saturday, right before our weekly swim meet was to begin, my coach asked me if I could do three different dives. Certainly any kid who had been hanging around the pool as much as I had that summer could, and I told my coach as much. My coach then replied, "Great, then you'll be diving today." It seems that the girls who were our regular divers were either sick or on vacation. After determining that a cannonball was not a dive, my coach and I came up with the three dives that I would do.
When the time came, I got up on the board, and in turn, did my three dives. When the results were announced, I had taken first place -- something that had never happened to me before!
That day became a turning point for me. Even though I still had to swim the backstroke, I also became a regular diver for our team, and I was fairly successful at it. Through diving I learned some things about myself. I found that I was actually good at a sport. Even though I was a slow swimmer, I became an important member of the swim team.
Also, even though my body didn't change that summer, I felt differently about it. Diving gave me a new perspective. When I got up onto the diving board, I felt strong and graceful, and those feelings stayed with me even when I was not at the pool. |
| |
 |
About
the Author |
| |
Lynn Jaffee
: Lynn Jaffee is Program Director of the Melpomene Institute for Research on Women and Girls' Health.
|
| |
|
| |
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
