Kiwi and I were just chatting and it dawned on us that we haven’t seen each other since Trials! That is an eternity! Same goes for Carrie! And don’t even get me started on Erika, whom I haven’t seen since we rang in 2008 together! Some of the my other swim friends I last saw in Omaha as well and I miss them all! Twitter and Facebook are great, but I miss my homies!

Back when we first started getting into the sport (post-Athens bitches; we’ve been around a minute, huh?) we were all over the place. We were attending national meets nearly every other month and it was awesome! We were the fan fixtures in the stands learning more about the sport and meeting awesome swim parents at the same time. They simply could not believe we traveled to all of these meets without having a background in swimming ourselves!

Flash back to Summer Nationals in 2006. We spent our final night in Irvine, partying with the Florida Gator swimmers; the Lochtenator included. When some of them found out that we weren’t swimmers ourselves, they thought it was the coolest thing ever! It’s too bad hotel security shut that party down. It was jumpin’!

And I still get that when I meet other media members while covering meets. I know the inevitable “what drew you to the sport?” question is coming and when I give my answer, the look on their faces is priceless!

It often goes like this:

“You mean, you don’t swim?”

“Nope.”

“Like, ever?”

“Only if a boat I’m on is sinking…”

“Wow!”

All the hoopla surrounding this weekend’s Charlotte Ultraswim grand prix stop got me thinking about how exciting it used to be going to frequent meets. A lot of our faves are competing at Ultraswim: The Hoff, The Lochtenator, Fleeeee, T-Dub!!, the Vanderkaays, Peirsol, Cullen… The perfect group of swimmers to be strolling deckside with. Imagine the “Tales From The Deck” I could share! Had this meet taken place back in our “glory years”, where it seemed money grew on trees, we would soooo be there this weekend! My mom spent the first part of her life living just outside of Charlotte, and my family still owns that house. I wouldn’t even need a hotel for this swim trip!

As we went though the past quadrennium, I got more and more comfortable with the sport and transitioned from just a fan to also a media member. It’s been a great ride! I still remember watching the Athens games and trying to learn all the strokes and terminology down. And now, I report on the goings-on of the sport. I’m still a fan, and I consider a number of the swimmers I cover to be friends, but the growth I’ve experienced in the past 5 years has been enormous! How’s that for a turnaround?

So naturally we’re a little nostalgic these days because we can’t just hop on a plane and go to a meet anymore. Damn economy! We’ve missed some great ones too! It looks like Santa Clara and World Trials will be it for some of us this year. Depressing? Yes.

So, this post serves as a notice that there may be a number of throwback posts headed your way. Our material has been a little dry lately since we aren’t attending meets like yesteryear anymore. So, we’ll take a stroll down memory lane, and hope you’ll join us!

Comments RSS