Narrative Essay - Olympics 2016

Narrative Essay

Wooyoung choi

In the 2016 Olympics, swimming is not only famous in America, but also Americans are good at swimming. The U.S. won thirty-three medals from swimming and, that’s the reason why it ranked 1st place in swimming. Australia won 2nd place with ten swimming medals. Swimming is one of the famous and difficult aquatic sports. When you are swimming, first, you learn how to breathe while you are swimming and then, coaches generally teach how to move forward with your legs, feet, and hands. There are basically 4 strokes: freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly. Many people learn these four strokes first, and after they mastered these strokes, coaches teach spinning, diving, or extra skills for their learners. I’ve been learning swimming for five years and I finally master all of the general strokes, but I was stuck at adding spins, and diving to the strokes. After these frustrating moments, I started to practice harder than I ever have. The hardest swim practice was that became the most helpful experience assisted me to challenge myself to finally swim butterfly properly.

Almost 10 or 20 minutes before swim practice; all students had to do warm-ups to practice with heated body. Just a few of the coaches came out and looked after their students. Sometimes they taught some new warm-ups, but usually they were taking care of their students. I was totally interested in today’s practice schedules. But while I was doing two laps of my warm-ups, I realized that I had a stomach ache. Coaches kept yelling, “Take a rest!” but I said “I’m fine and my stomach is okay.” There were over 20 people in the swimming pool, and three coaches standing next to the pool. I was in the big swimming pool, and there was a water bubble from the other lines. When I finished my warm-ups, I stretched my body and waited for my teammates. Practice started when all members were gathered by coaches, and we began practicing our insufficient strokes. For me, it was butterfly.

While swimming, my least favorite stroke, butterfly, I realized that my posture was wrong. I felt awkward like a jellyfish rather than a butterfly. The coach taught me to stretch my arms when I go up after wave, but I didn’t stretch my arms, even though I didn’t wave powerfully. I was really disappointed on myself. I thought I was good at swimming, but I was not. While I was checking my postures.  At the same time, I decided to practice more after the regular practice. My shoulders and ankles were in so much pain, so after I’d done correcting my posture and steps for strokes, I couldn’t kick well. So I drank a lot of water which made me feel like I could vomit anywhere. While I was swimming laps, coaches yelled, “You guys are so slow. You need to speed up!”