The Early Years
Believe it or not, the swim stars were not born the amazing athletes you are familiar with today! Many had their fair share of hurdles before they rose to dominance. For the newest edition of “The Burning Question” we look at the early years plus impressions the swim stars had of the sport when they were young. We cover first meets as well as general impressions from their early training years.
It’s not very often that you see a National Team swimmer get disqualified, but it happened to several of them; and during their very first meets! From false starts to cheating and swimming in the wrong heat, some of these Swim Stars were disqualified.
Growing up in an American/Western Compound in Saudi Arabia, Erik Vendt let his competitive spirit and love of candy get the best of him during his first race in the pool. “Each heat winner received a handful of candy,” Erik said. “So, being a 6 year old in a country where candy was hard to come by, I desperately wanted to win!” Erik went head-to-head with his neighbor and best friend in a 25 Breaststroke race. However, things weren’t going as planned. Erik began to fall behind his friend and competitor. “With my yearning for that candy and competitive nature wanting to win, I decided on drastic measures. I reached under the lane and pulled my best friend’s suit down to his ankles!” While his friend struggled to pull his suit up, young Erik sprinted to the end of the lane and won; or so he thought. “Thinking I had won, I started celebrating, only to find out that what I did was illegal and that I was disqualified.”
Erik learned a valuable lesson that day. “Obviously the way to go about winning isn’t through cheating but I think the moral of the story is that in order to succeed in any sport (but especially swimming) you need a very competitive spirit that will drive to do things you didn’t think were possible.”
Erik was not the only Swim Star to experience a disqualification in an early race. A 7 year old Ryan Lochte was in the same boat. “I remember the bright purple suit I had on,” Ryan recalls. He was getting ready to swim the 25 Backstroke, his first race of his very first meet that day. A candy junkie from the start, Ryan remembers being the tiny little kid in lane two eating skittles before the race. “I get in, the guy says ‘take your marks’, and I go! I false started and was disqualified.”
Tara Kirk also remembers having a disqualification occur during her first meet. It was the first of only 3 in her career. At that point, she was still participating in other sports and her first swim meet took place after one of her soccer games. “I wasn’t very fast and my little sister had been swimming for a while and was really good, so I was pretty intimidated.” Tara was tapped to swim the 100 Backstroke in a relay for her team. “I am really bad at backstroke, and I had no idea how to turn so I got the relay DQed!” Tara admits being scared throughout that situation, but she is glad that she stuck with the sport.
At only 5 years old, Katie Hoff took the blocks for her first meet. While she was climbing up, she didn’t notice that she was in the wrong heat. “I was five and clueless and I didn’t look around me to see that I was surrounded by little boys!” She climbed up there so fast that the timers didn’t have time to stop her before the gun went off. “I dove in and started swimming. I remember my mom on the side splashing me with water to stop me,” Katie says. She thought her mother and everyone else was just cheering her on! Katie touched the wall at the end of her 25 Freestyle and realized what had just happened. “I obviously got DQ’ed and I remember crying. My mom came over and asked why I didn’t stop when she was splashing me.” Katie’s reply to her mother’s query: “I thought you were trying to make it fun for me and cheer me on!”
Katie’s first meet experience did not discourage her from continuing on with swimming. She, too, came away with some wisdom from her disqualification. “I have now learned to take a peak around me before I step up onto the blocks.”
While disqualifications were not a part of their early meet experiences, there were still some trials endured that helped mold Jessica Hardy, Kaitlin Sandeno, Peter Vanderkaay, and Megan Romano into the elite swimmers they are today.
Jessica did not like attending practices coming up as an age group swimmer. She wouldn’t go to more than 2 per week until she was 16 years old. “As punishment, my coaches always used to put me in the hardest events at swim meets,” she said. While many of her contemporaries recall early races in the 25 distance, 5 years old Jessica was entered in the 100 Freestyle by her coaches. “I had never even trained anything that far in my career so far!”
Jessica recalls having panic attacks all night long the night before the meet, but everything worked out! “I ended up doing quite well. I don’t remember exactly, but I guess I did well enough not to quit, because I’m still here today!”
Megan Romano doesn’t exactly remember setting the pool on fire when she was younger. She simply remembers having a great time with her friends. “I still am on a team with some of the same people now,” she said. “I love how we have been together for so long.” At 6, she didn’t really have long term goals, but now tries to evolve with each competition. “Every meet was a stepping stone for me and I just got better and better. Every meet you learn something new.” Megan views her meets as a learning experience, especially the big ones she is now regularly competing at. “Mistakes only make you better.”
Peter Vanderkaay does not have many memories of his early swimming years. He just remembers not being as fast as everyone else. “I really sucked when I was little,” he said. “I wasn’t DQ’d very much; just slow.” Seems a little harsh coming from one of the world’s premiere middle distance freestyle swimmers, doesn’t it? Well, there was something inside Peter that kept him in the sport through all of those years. He eventually started dropping time and continues to do so. Had he left the sport after his early disappoint, he would not have made it to the medal podium at the Olympics in 2004.
As a youngster Kaitlin Sandeno could have let her feat keep her from remaining in the sport. “I remember that my parents took me to a long course meet to watch,” she explained. Kaitlin told her parents, “I never want to do that!” Long course competition scared her. But the very next year she was competiting long course. Today, Kaitlin holds a long course American record in the 400 IM, which she set at the 2004 Olympics.
A common theme you will be able to spot from these National Team swimmers is that perseverance pays off. They are not easily discouraged if things do not initially turn out the way they plan. Nor do they allow their fears to prevent them from going after something they want to accomplish. They learn from their experiences and grow not only as athletes but also as individuals. Their stories provide valuable lessons for people in all walks of life. Think about the last time you didn’t do well in school, or maybe the week when everything went wrong at work. What did you do? Hopefully, you continued to work hard and press onward towards achieving your goals. That’s what the Swim Stars would have done!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.