Chlorinated: The world inside each swim team

Thanks to Lexi Coon of brantaphotos.com for contributing this photo essay:

Most competitive swimmers start the same way: bi-weekly lessons, that turn into daily practices, that turn into daily doubles, that turn into a career. It was what got me up before five in the morning and put me to bed before ten every night, what kept me from going out with my friends, what forced me to drink caffeine during school to pay attention during classes. The chlorine burned my skin, killed my hair, and dripped out of my pores every day. It took over my life.

A phrase that is in every swimmers vocabulary, starting in high school usually, is “I can’t, I have swim practice.” We planned our weekends around swim meets and four hour long practices and cancelled plans if we thought we would be too tired by the end of the day to really enjoy them, all for the love of a sport. By the time you hit college, that sport has turned into a lifestyle. Each swimmer suffered as a part of the team: swimming-induced injuries, illnesses, and exhaustion plagued all of us. We ate together, swam together, showered together, traveled together, studied together, ran together, slept together. We delighted in each others’ success, and shared in each others’ failures. There is no doubt that one swimmer would stand up for another. We were a family to be cliche, or a cult to be direct; by the end of the season, my teammates knew me better than I knew myself.

“You are a student-athlete. Student first. Athlete second,” was a popular phrase heard by our coach. But what many don’t understand is the extra effort student-athletes put in to earn the same grades as their non-athletic counterparts.  Swimmers have an undeniable ferocity to get what we want- to the point where we seem obsessive, even crazy. But to really be invested in the sport, you have to be a little crazy. Our days started at 5:30 and ended somewhere between 10:30 and midnight. Some days included over four and a half hours of intense exercise before we have any classes. See that athlete almost asleep in the corner? She might have just had the worst work-out of her life and has already been awake for six hours, while you woke up 45 minutes ago and had lunch. Why is he graduating in five years instead of four? His classes might not have fit around his practice times, so he had to delay getting his degree. Everyone knows that swimmers have to wake up early for practices, that we always smell like chlorine, and that we have to eat our weight in food to stay healthy. Those are common facts about the sport. What always seems to astound people is the level of passion and commitment that swimmers exhibit in and out of the pool.

Now, as a retired collegiate swimmer, a swammer if you will, I have realized that there is a world inside each team that takes over the lives of each swimmer. We became enveloped in each other’s lives, working, pushing, destroying our bodies all to achieve a common goal.

Some could say swimming was the bane of my existence. But at the same time, it was everything I lived for.

About the Author

My name is Lexi Coon, and I’m a farm girl from Dover, Delaware. I competitively swam for 17 years, breaststroke and IM mostly, hopping from the Dover YMCA to the Brandywine YMCA, finally ending my career at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. While at UMBC I am majoring in Spanish and photography and minoring in journalism and biology in addition to serving as a tri-captain of the Women’s Swim and Dive Team my junior and senior year. I will graduate in December 2015 and am planning to pursue a career photojournalism, focusing on the aspects of societies and nature that go unseen by the general population. This photo essay was designed to show the outside world that being a member of a collegiate swim team is more than early mornings and wet hair and the dedication that all team members have towards their sport and their team.

You can see more photography from Lexi on her website, brantaphotos.com.