Carbon copies
Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 8:43PM When you're young, you don't think about the grand scheme of things, the bigger picture of life, or generally anything that matters beyond whatever semester of high school you're plowing through. My world at age 17 was certainly that type of world. Little mattered beyond swimming, grades, and deciding which college I planned to attend. Swimming was at the forefront of all that, since it would be the major deciding factor in my college choice, and it was absolutely my passion. I was good at it. Swimming, as you obviously know by now after reading this blog for a number of years, was my life.
Some of you know the story of my senior year of high school, and the corresponding high school swimming season. In Arizona, high school swimming is highly competitive—many swimmers achieve national standards at the championship meet, although many of the fastest swimmers opt to train with their year-round club teams, while other swimmers work out with the high school team exclusively. I was one of the former, training every day at the University of Arizona with my club team, one of the top 10 nationally at the time. I was working my way toward the most incredible season I'd ever had. I was in the best shape of my life, and I was shocking myself every day in practice with the times I was putting on the board. I couldn't wait for the state championships, and knew I had it in me to become an Arizona state champion, and hopefully win a team championship in the process.
On the way to States was Regionals, the local swim meet pitting area high schools of a similar size against each other, and the meet where we'd swim fast enough to qualify well for States, but weren't completely rested. My senior year at regionals, everything seemed to be going as planned. I swam fast, my teammates swam fast, and we dominated the meet.
Until the 200 medley relay. An official made a call from an outside lane, four lanes away from the lane my team was swimming in, that one of the girls jumped the gun on a relay exchange. We were disqualified. Immediately, we ended up losing points that would have helped us secure a victory at States, and we were devastated. I couldn't understand how the call was legal, and Mr. Ward, our high school team coach, couldn't, either. He argued the call and tried to get it reversed, but in the end, we ended up having to take the disqualification of one of our three relays, which easily would have placed in the top three at States.
A couple weeks later, we took our show on the road to Phoenix, where we competed in the state championship meet. I placed second in my individual events and helped my other two relay teams to top-three finishes, in the process earning several NISCA High School All-American honors and personal best times. During the meet, there was a problem with the bulkhead, the artificial wall used to create the 25-yard pool that we swam in at Arizona State University. The meet director decided that the women's 50 yard freestyle would be scored differently due to the bulkhead breaking during a race, and as a result, our rival team gained several points that they wouldn't have, had the scoring remained the same. The meet, and the championship title, then came down to the last relay of the meet.
We were edged out of a state title in both the event, and as a team, by four points.
Later that fall, at our team banquet, Mr. Ward allowed each of the seniors to speak. I don't remember much of what I said, and I don't remember much of what anyone said, actually, but I do remember this: After the banquet was over, Mr. Ward handed me a piece of paper, three sheets of carbon paper still bound together that would have entered the 200 medley relay into the state championship, had we not been disqualified. It was the piece of paper that would have secured enough points to win that championship, and Mr. Ward must have known how much that meant to me. I knew it meant a lot to him, since we were the most competitive girls' team that Rincon/UHS had ever fielded, and we all expected to come home to Tucson as champions. This championship would have, and should have, belonged to all of us.
Four years later, my college swim team at Tulane would meet a similar fate, where the last event of the meet would decide a championship, but things turned out differently in that case. Even still, I've come across the relay entry from November 2001 while cleaning things out at home and have thought about how much that championship would have meant to every girl on that team. In many ways, it would have meant more than my college conference championship title.
This afternoon, I received news that Mr. Ward had passed away. Immediately I thought of this story and how I've wanted to share it for some time. I think when we lose someone, whether it's permanently or through a more temporary disconnect in life, the memories that first come to mind are the best things we remember about that person.
I'll remember Mr. Ward as an incredibly kind man, the father of my longtime friend Stacey, a longtime friend of my own father, and the coach who was so supportive of me, especially through that final season. How he gave me that piece of paper, however, is something I'll never forget.










