Last Thursday I tried out for a club swim team and this morning was my first practice with my new team. I practically had an anxiety attack from my nerves last night because I knew it was going to be a hard practice, but little did I know that it was going to end as bad as it did.
On my school swim team, the coaches say that everyone is on varsity and that we just have "morning group" and "afternoon group" even though everyone knows that that is bull crap and we go ahead with calling ourselves varsity and junior varsity anyways. There are four, now five starting this fall, high schools in my district. Three out of the four high schools have varsity and JV swim teams that get along well. Me being the lucky person that I am go to the one school that has all the drama between the two groups. I would love to get moved up to varsity eventually, except that it's agreed that everyone who swims varsity, excuse me, morning group, are total douche bags (except the varsity members probably wouldn't agree). I've yet to go to a single team function because I know that the two teams don't get along and I have a feeling that if I went to a team party that I'd probably wind up awkwardly standing in the back. It's something that I don't regret and part of the reason why I'm joining choir because people in choir are nice. All year I just wanted to have a second family in which my team were members, but that was not the case at all.
Anyways, this morning all the kids that swim varsity were there and I ended up sitting alone as they happily chatted away. There were incoming freshmen there that I knew and even they were too cool to even look my way. Luckily there were two girls that I tried out with and we ended up getting in a lane together with some other girl varsity girl who gave attitude when I asked if we could be in her lane.
We didn't last much longer than our 800 choice swim (warm up. And it was long course which is always *awesome*). It was during the kick set when the coach came up to us and had us go to summer conditioning which was at the other end of the pool. I had texted a friend last night about my anxiety and she smiled at me as I was leaving, but the other people kicking had no excuse to stare at me and the two girls that I tried out with were escorted away.
It was absolutely humiliating.
The conditioning coach, Coach Salazar, was extremely nice and had us hop into one of the faster lanes, only to be moved down because we were getting "run over by the muscular gorilla boys. The sets I would up swimming were easy which worries me because I've been so stressed out about not making the team next this year. I want to swim for as long as possible, but if I get cut I'm done. I'm not going to be the junior who comes back after getting cut. I thought club swimming was going to be the most beneficial way for me to drop enough time this summer, but obviously not since I got lapped like crazy during the warm-up.
I'm really irritated. I got put into a group because of my age and not my skill level by one coach and then another coach rejects me. PUT ME IN A GROUP BASED ON MY SKILL LEVEL!
My mom wasn't the most sympathetic either. "Well, what was meant to happen happened."
"Well, what happened is embarrassing!"
"What's to be embarrassed about? Football players get pulled from the middle of the game to sit on a bench in front of all these spectators. How do you think they feel?"
I didn't say anything because I was on the verge of crying and I knew that's something my voice wasn't going to hide. So I answered her question in my head. "It's different from football players. I'm embarrassed because everyone was watching me and I'm sure I was the topic of gossip in the locker rooms once their practice was over. Rejection sucks, this situation sucks. Life sucks."
What was worse was that my dad was so excited when I came home because he thinks I'm the best swimmer in the world and that "This summer is going to be your summer!" My mom wound up telling him for me and all I heard as I went to the shower where I could cry privately was "That's not fair!"
It's been pretty awkward with my family since they've been treating me like I'm some ticking emotional time bomb. I found some funny YouTube videos and a three hour nap always helps, and I'm not on the verge of sobbing anymore, but still. It won't change what happened and laughing it off as people are staring at you getting politely kicked out of practice doesn't always happen.
This morning I was wallowing while on Tumblr and my dad came up to me. He knows that I'm not the type to always want to talk things out with him or my mom (the Internet serves its purpose, thank you very much) so it was short and sweet. "Grace, I think you got the technique down and now you have to work on speed. Try to turn this into a positive experience, I know you're a 'glass half full' type of girl."
Except the glass is definitely half empty at this point.
