Swimming

All this swimming coverage on the Olympic channels has me in a mind of reminicinse.  There was a time ages and ages ago when I was a pretty good swimmer.  Swimming was a fun sport for me to do for many reasons, one of them of course was the fact that the boys and the girls were together practicing as well as competing co-ed at different meets all over the South Bay.  It was also an adventure completely shaving my legs once every four years, that was fun...but the most fun I ever had was during a race in Long Beach...we were in the Finals and I swam the Butterfly leg of our medley relay...that meant I was going first, and it was a big race..the biggest I ever swam.  I was swimming in a Varsity finals match and all of the best swimmers were in the relay..we had me, Jason Chung, Karl Haushalter, and Greg Wagner.  It was a big deal for all of us and I was ready.  I remember concentrating on flying of the starting block the second the gun sounded.  Once I hit the water I let my adrenaline take over and concentrated on swimming the Butterfly as fast as I could for 2 laps. (one hundred yards)   It was great, I don't think we won first but we came in 2nd or third and it was fun being on a team.  Leaning over into the lane and screaming as loud as you could for your teammates.  I thought of that when the Americans edged out the French by .08 seconds in the 4x100 Free.  It was a great feeling!