My Four Years of High School Swimming by Adrian

My Four Years of High School Swimming by Adrian - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

My name is Adrian Clarke, and I have just successfully completed my four years of high school swimming at Plano Senior High School. My version of failure is not achieving what you what you set your current goal as, and for me as a freshman at the time; was to make the highest level of swimming which is Varsity.
Before all of this I had recently just fallen in love with the sport. It was hard for me to like it being the lazy person I was and still am. The daily struggle my mom and I had of forcing me to go to practice early at 7 am (which was super hard for me at the time being a 7th grader) But the more and more times I went to practice I grew more into loving the sport as a whole as a also grew a connection with my club coach. Day by day it became easier to go to practice as I enjoyed talking to my coach because she would give me life lessons and tips she had given me when she was a swimmer at my age.
For two years I had been a club swimmer, and now it was time to join the high school swim team at Plano Senior. As a freshman; I thought I could smash the whole competition at tryouts looking at the other swimmers, and how I thought I would beat them. As tryouts continued throughout the week; I thought I had done amazing, but when the results came in; I was devastated to find out that I had made the Junior Varsity team (JV). At first I let that get to my head and was angry and sad at the same time, but I then thought to myself, and be grateful that I had made the team.
I had worked out to the best of my ability that swim season, and grew a great relationship with my coaches; asking them where I could go over the summer and practice for next years tryouts. So I had worked hard over the summer ready for the tryouts my sophomore year, and ended up dominating the competition , and making the varsity team that year, and every since I have been on the varsity swim team.
I learned to never let your mistakes go to your head and be grateful for what you have and be more open minded throughout life. With that mindset; I was able to make varsity by working hard and having a great mindset.