Undergraduate / "swimming season" - FSU vires and mores [4]

The few months of swimming season are always the most challenging of the school year. Waking up at 4 am every weekday morning to attend 2 hour practices before going to school never seems to get any easier. Yet, every year I always look forward to those first early practices and lament the end of the season in November. For me, the swim team is where the concepts of Vires, (strength), and Mores, (tradition) are the most identifiable. Especially this year, as my team's "captain."

Being one of only five seniors on a team that consists of mostly underclassmen, its my responsibility to set an example for my younger teammates. This means not only showing up to practice in the morning, but arriving with a positive attitude, ready to practice hard. Sometimes after being up at school until late at night for a newspaper deadline, I need to get up for a practice the next morning. Finding the strength to do this each morning requires a motivation that comes from my teammates and the obligation I feel towards them.

Like most fall sports, swim meets are often overshadowed by football games. Students are not flocking to the pool to cheer for the swim team. This means that team mates must rely on each other for support. The tradition of the Choctaw swim team is to be one of the loudest and craziest collection of athletes at any given meet. Sometimes underclassmen will approach me terrified of the next 200 or 500 yard race that they're about to swim. I give them my advice, trying my best to calm them down, and when the time comes for them to swim, I'll be the one squatting at the end of the pool, clutching the large wooden spear (for our mascot, the Choctaw Indians) and hollering at them when their ears break the surface of the water. Once I even wore an Indian costume at one of the meets, complete with fake leather tassels and beads; following the tradition of a team that has become family to me over the years.

Im more proud to be associated with a tradition of intense comradery rather than a tradition of victories in the pool. Because it is through this tradition that I find strength. When I feel as if I no longer have enough energy to keep plowing through the water morning after morning, I remind myself that my team mates are working just as hard, and towards the same goals. Without tradition, the tradition of 'The Tribe', I wouldn't have been able to overcome the physical and mental blocks that I needed to conquer in order to grow as an athlete and as a person. The tradition of the Choctaw swim team is to have faith in our team mates. I believe in myself and my abilities as a leader and a swimmer, but my team mates have given me reassurance that has empowered me to pursue my goals.