As nervousness swept over my mind I closed my eyes and allowed the water to submerge my body. I sprinted away from the wall, arms pumping, legs kicking as fast I could I raced for the ball. Barely beating out the other player. I threw the ball to the teammate trailing in my wake. With almost not enough time to break away from the opposite team I let myself go to get in front of the goal to make the first shot, without hesitation.
I fell in love with water polo when I started playing my freshman year in high school. I’ve played a lot of sports, but nothing was like this one. I used to be on a state winning team, and I used to be in the starting line-up. Until the day I had to end it.
Throughout my water polo career I’ve only had one water polo coach, and I knew him for four years prior to high school. He excelled in science and at one point on his life he wanted to be a doctor. Being a Spanish teacher he always had a good connection with kids. He was someone that I trusted and that I could go to about anything, until the day came that he didn’t care about anything or anyone but himself. He would come to morning practices looking as if someone hit him upside the head with a bat, but that was our water polo coach with a hangover. He would cross the line with some of the girls on the team by flirting with them and everyone was too naive to do or say anything about it. When he stopped caring about the well being of the team, I stopped caring.
At that point he would make it obvious that he didn’t want to be there. Whenever we would be warming up for practice or doing a swim set he would be over talking to the boys coach or helping out the boys team, and that wasn’t fair. We all knew that he wanted to coach the boys more than us, even though we go to state every year and we always have gotten in the top three. That didn’t make a difference.
Once that started happening I would end up talking back to him about petty things and that was not my nature, that’s when I realized that I needed to make a change in my lifestyle. He realized that I had more in my life than just Water Polo, so he stopped putting me on the starting line-up and would only put me in when we were against teams that even the less experienced players could beat. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was heavily involved in triathlons and my triathlon coach was expecting me to make the USA National Triathlon Team; I couldn’t let someone down who truly cared about me, not only as an athlete but also as a person.
The day finally came when my water polo coach came to morning practice and yelled at everyone to, “Move their asses and to stop slacking off”. It was not only the last straw for me; it was the last straw for our captain. She walked out of practice because he said that she was the prime example of someone who doesn’t care, when in reality he was the one who didn’t care. That was the same day as my best game and the same day that I quit.
That afternoon I walked onto the pool deck, headphones blaring Black Sabbath’s “The Wizard” in my ears. I allowed the music to drown everything out, because I knew that it was my last game and it was against our archrivals, Libertyville. He did not start me, but I didn’t expect him to so I knew that when he eventually had to put me in I would go all out. I wasn’t in the first two quarters and we were down by four goals, and then after halftime he called my name, “Elyse! Get in, you’re doing the swim off”. Without hesitation I made sure my cap was tight around my chin and I walked to the farthest end of the eight-lane pool. The referee blew his whistle and I jumped into the now freezing cold water. I treaded there, waiting for the whistle to blow; then I was finally off. Neither my arms nor my legs ever felt like this before; they felt as if they were making me fly, and then I got the ball first. I swam away from my team’s end of the pool to the opposite side and I received the ball in front of my arm strokes. I was placed face to face with Libertyville’s goalie and I shot the ball past her. I continued this striking streak throughout the game. I was able to make about 75% of the shots that game, ending the game in the score of 16-6, Stevenson.
After the game I prepared myself to tell my coach that I couldn’t be on the team anymore, but I still didn’t know what to say. How do you tell someone that you’ve trusted in the past that the reason why you’re leaving their team is because of them? I didn’t, but I knew that I needed to tell him the truth and not try to make excuses.
I walked up to him steadily, he was behind the scoring system when I found him and he was looking down at what he was doing and didn’t look up the entire time I talked.
“ Hey Coach.”
He said in his sarcastic tone, “What do you need?” He didn’t even flinch to look up at me.
“ I can’t be on the team anymore, it’s starting to take a lot out of me and the way that you’re treating me and some of the other girls is wrong and-“ He cut me off.
“Fine, turn in your caps.” He said as he walked away. I slowly put my caps on the scoring table and walked away without looking back.
The next day I got the paper on a Friday morning, and I turned to the sports section to look at what story was written about our team that game. The headline read: “Sawka Shuts Down Wildcats”. As soon as I read that I knew that I didn’t have any hard feelings about quitting the team, because I knew that my coach was too immature to handle his job, and I knew that I was doing the right thing all along. It made me realize that I shouldn’t let others influence the way I act or think because they have their own insecurities. That experience made me a stronger person and now I know that no one, not even a coach can tell me different. I was able to make my triathlon coach proud by making the USA National Triathlon team. I now know who true coaches are.
