Swim Team

I called my parents on Sunday night to let them know that their granddaughter helped win the Vermont State 8 & under freestyle relay title. It was quite an accomplishment for a kid who, until last Monday, jumped into the pool off the starting blocks (while holding her nose) rather than dive. And her competitors, ages 8 and younger, weren’t a bunch of dog-paddlers either. They could really swim — and do things like flip turns.

But rather than gush forth with congratulations, my father asked, “Why are you making her do this?”

“This” being swim team.

“Uh, because swimming is a good activity for kids,” I stammered. “And it’s really helping to improve her strokes.”

“And her friends do it,” I added when he said nothing in return.

After another pause, I said, “And it’s a good group of kids.” Longer pause. “And she can swim far now.” Pause. “So if she fell out of a boat in the middle of a lake, she wouldn’t drown.”

“Safety is a good reason,” my dad finally said.

Yes, safety is a good reason to learn to swim long distances without touching bottom, or clinging to the side. But his question ate at me the rest of the evening. Why were we making her do swim team? He made it sound like a forced march.

My dad is the smartest man I know — Harvard educated and winner of at least one Latin prize. He has read everything written by Shakespeare and can tell Mozart from Beethoven in just three notes.

But to my knowledge, he has never done anything against a stopwatch (to my knowledge, he was never timed listing the declensions of the demonstrative pronoun hic, haec, hoc). While he’s active and fit for a 76-year-old — and very competitive on an intellectual playing field — he has never seemed to understand why anyone would enter an athletic contest.

He has called athletes such as Michael Phelps and Roger Federer genetic anomalies and does seem to enjoy watching them compete. But us mortals? There are better things we could be doing. Winning a freestyle relay — or the Leadville 100, or the local tennis club round robin — won’t solve the world’s problems (not that the Latin prize will). Winning — or even participating in sports — doesn’t give us a better understanding of the world, although international competition does give us a small window into other cultures.

But what I’ve realized over the past 30+ years of competing in everything from rowing to alpine skiing (and not terribly well in any of them), is that athletic competition, and the rigors of training for it, gives us a better understanding of ourselves.

Yes, sports make us fit and allow us to eat as many cookies as we want, and they offer a chance to single-mindedly pursue a goal — usually among friends and/or teammates.

But there’s more to it than this. When we push to our physical limits — and beyond — it strips away all the superficial layers of our personalities, all the barriers we have constructed so people won't see our true selves, and exposes who we really are. I’ve learned more about myself — and more about what parts of my character need shoring up — by being dropped by Olympic cyclists Jeanie Longo and Rebecca Twigg than I ever did holed up in the computer lab writing a masters thesis on the bio-denitrification of drinking water.

I learned what hard work really is, because while we can hide our grades behind the veil of confidentiality, we can’t hide crossing the finish line five minutes down on the leaders, or losing a tennis match 6-0. The scores and times are there for all to see.

And when we do win, we can hold our heads high — higher than we can if we win the spelling bee or math tournament … or Latin prize. In face, it’s the opposite reaction. I have vivid memories of hunching my shoulders up to my head, as if I were a turtle trying to hide, after winning spelling bees in grade school. Athletes are heralded. Smart kids are teased. Thick glasses and general lack of hand-eye coordination didn't help.

Next time my parents call, I will tell my dad that Sam did swim team because she’s good at it. And in the future, if kids taunt her because she wins the math quiz bowl, or because she can spell floccinaucinihilipilification, or because she drops a pop-fly in a P.E. softball game, she can remember that she is the Vermont State freestyle relay champion, or at least a quarter of it.

And should she fall overboard or capsize a canoe, chances are she’ll make it to shore.