Why Do They Swim? (Part II)

By Robert Sullivan, in the second part of a five-piece series

They swim to reach goals.

We all set goals in life, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, not always disappointing.

In our town, which must be adjudged as Goal Oriented even in a select subset of goal-oriented towns, this is emblematic among oldsters and youngsters, both—we set goals, put names to them, and it’s certainly not seen as more “adult” to set extreme goals in Chappaqua or more “childish.” We set goals for ourselves and for our kids, and our kids set goals for themselves, per our teaching, and later for us.

Having said that philosophical nonsense, let’s say further: It can sometimes be problematical that the grown-ups, as we call ourselves, put names and numbers on the goals we set for our kids. We might be thinking of things along the lines of Diploma or Dropout, 500 or 600 or 800, Adelphi or Amherst or Bard or Binghampton or East Giblip, Wellesley or Wesleyan or York or Zion. We might be thinking of  “getting ahead” or “marrying well.” We come up with a name or phrase for whatever it is. Whatever we’re thinking trickles down to the kids, but that’s a tricky question for another day—let’s think about what the kids are thinking on their own.

In this case, let’s think about the swimmers. Their goals have different names. They might be thinking of “having good friends at the pool” or “having a good time on the team.” Certainly they have technical terms, too, from the get-go; in fact, has there ever been such a formally goal-oriented sport as swimming? A slogan for one of Greeley’s local feeder teams has it that the coaches, who are exemplary in their reasonableness, are dedicated to helping the athletes achieve “from their first B bar to the Olympic trials,” and over the years, they have succeeded at nurturing both goals. A “B bar” represents an early standard, and then there are double B’s and A’s and there are further goals that get in the swimmers’ heads: JO’s and Zones and such. On the team’s website there is a section for the 100% club—kids who bested all of their previous times in events they just swam at a particular meet. That brings us to the term Personal Best, an ages-old sports phrase that we’ll dwell on here.

Swimmers, it can be said, have been goal oriented since they learned to not drown. It’s in the industrial framework of competitive swimming. On club teams, they have the mentioned-above standards, and then they swim in high school.

At Greeley, the kids hope to “Score Points”—that’s a capitalized goal—and there can be no more noble aspiration on any team or in any family, and they’ve done very well at this in recent years, with both the girls and boys teams becoming champions. Individually and also as teammates, several of them hope to qualify for “Sectionals” or “States,” and there, in these lofty realms, they hope to do Greeley proud.

Here’s the curious thing, and a curious term: Even the best of them very rarely hope to set Personal Bests, because they have years of swimming and tapering behind them, and because they compete late in the day, after classes, and who can swim their fastest then?

But let’s consider Personal Best. As a goal, isn’t it the most perfect term ever? The recent Greeley swimmers, boys and girls both, have been putting up personal bests—not necessarily lowest times—on a meet-by-meet basis, and that’s why they’ve done so well. And it’s why they’ve enjoyed their swimming.

A weekend ago in a means-nothing swim meet in Mount Kisco, one of our very best swimmers—one of our best-ever-in-Greeley-history swimmers—paced another young man of 24 years in a free sprint. Our guy acted as the rabbit, taking the other man out. These two were former teammates on a club team but the older fellow was actually a Brewster High grad, so not even a Greeley loyalist. Doesn’t matter. Our guy tugged him for the first half, then faded as planned, and finished with his worst time of the current season. The older fellow did well, as they both had hoped he would at the beginning of the race, and they shared an enthusiastic handshake at the end.

Each had registered a Personal Best, and that’s why they swim.

Bob Sullivan, a former editor and writer at Sports Illustrated, is more proudly a swim dad. His elder daughter and his son have competed in recent years for the Mount Kisco Boys & Girls Club Marlins and the Horace Greeley High School Quakers, both in New York. Sullivan recently wrote a series of articles for the Greeley boosters website speculating on why his kids and all the others stick with it, and they will be reprinted here in SwimSwam by permission of the author.