Here is an article written by one of our swimmers, Zoe Mena, about the Junior Olympics via the Grunion Gazette.  Zoe is ready to enter seventh grade at Rogers Middle School.

July 28, 2011

To all of my fellow swimmers and other athletes who qualified for the Junior Olympics, I just wanted to say good luck to you. I will be rooting for you. You guys really deserve this opportunity for all the effort you put in.  “I had to practice every day so I could go,” says Janet Rivera, one of my teammates. “It’s going to be very fun and very cool.

If it weren’t for Beach Swim Club’s Teresa Pascuzzo’ encouragement and swimming tips no one would have made it. I would not have even tried. Writing about the Junior Olympics is hard. That is because I am not going.

I started to compete in swim meets about three months ago and learned I was only three seconds away from the qualifying time to make it to this annual regional competition in the 50-meter freestyle. After that, I started to go to swim practice way more and when summer began, I woke up at 6 a.m. every day to go to a pool in Carson. (Special thanks to my mom who drove me there.) I dreamed about wearing the bathing cap that read “Beach Swim Club Junior Olympics.”

After a month of practice, I finally got another chance to qualify for the Junior Olympics. Whether I would go or not would depend on the amount of time it takes to snap your fingers. Maybe less. It was 48 nanoseconds to be precise. Had I swam 48 nanoseconds faster, I’d be with my team mates, wearing my new swim cap.I think: if I had just kicked harder, if I just dove differently, if I hadn’t been so scared of the meets and begun competing two years ago. But the bottom line is I didn’t do any of those things. Tears ran down my face as I looked at the lights of the time clock. My mom wiped them away. She said, “You need to ask yourself how you plan to face failures. This will not be the last time you are in this sort of position.”Dragging from the defeat, my answer was not immediate. But now I know it.

Junior Olympics: just wait until next year!