The Time I Truly Was a Salty Stressball (Part One)

Okay, here's the thing: pay attention.

This past Friday, November 6, 2015, was my first High School Swim meet.

I have been swimming for quite a long time, so I was used for a certain type of meet set up, but High School Swimming is completely different, so I was pretty confused the whole night.

At the beginning of the meet, I found out that I was in the 400 Free Relay at the very end of the meet. I knew that the 200 IM Relay was at the beginning, so I thought that the whole night only consisted of the regular individual events and those two relays.

When I thought my relay was coming up, I asked my coach, Kelly, how much longer she thought I had until I had to swim in the relay. She checked and told me that I had around fifteen minutes or so, and that my relay would be in lane six.

What I didn't know is that Kelly thought I was talking about the 200 Free Relay which was a couple of events before the relay I was actually in.

I felt like this guy while I ran to my block.
Courtesy of Looney Tunes

All I knew about my relay is that it was right after the 100 Breaststrokes, so that was all I was looking out for.

For the next couple of minutes, I was talking to a couple of friends when all of the sudden, I hear someone yelling, "WHERE IS THE 'B' RELAY?!"

I didn't even think about what was going on, but when I made eye contact with Kelly and could clearly tell she was pointing directly at me, I dropped everything I ever thought in my entire life and ran.

I ripped the sweatshirt off of my body and grabbed my cap and goggles as I ran for my life to the block behind lane six. I threw my cap on, not even caring where the rest of my relay was (I didn't actually know who was on my relay). The rest of the teams were already up on the blocks, so my first instinct was to get right up on the blocks with them, even if the rest of my relay wasn't even there yet.

The man timing for my lane realized that I was the only one there, and asked, "Where's the rest of your relay?"

At that moment, I didn't even care. I knew I was supposed to be swimming the first leg of the relay in the first place, so I thought, I might as well show up and swim the first part of the relay than have our entire relay miss the race completely.

My heart had never beaten so hard, and I was so stressed out that my bottom lip actually started trembling as I was up on the blocks right before I was about to leave.

"Swimmers, please stand. Lane six, step down."

To be continued...

xx Em