Diary

Tracy
Shessler

Past Entries

March 22, 2004

The past four years have been the best of my life. I have grown and learned so much from my team, which makes it so much harder for me to leave. This time of year, after the excitement of taper and nationals has wound down, creates great opportunity for reflection. From the class of 2004: Jessica Burley, Jennifer Kanetsky, Tracy Shessler, and Donley Zifkin, here are ours:

Four years ago, we came in as a class of 17 girls and now prepare to leave as four of the luckiest women to come through Emory swimming. Not only have we changed over the past four years, but the team we leave is also very different from the team we entered with.

Going through four years as guinea pigs to Jon Howell's wicked experiments, we leave stronger and wiser, a little crazy at times, and reasonably bare, but the team is what we helped make and we are so proud to have lived in a legacy.

We've given up so much to be scholar athletes, from all the early morning wake-up calls to the afternoon practices that ran just a little longer than anticipated. From coming back from winter break early to spend 10 days in pain while training in Florida, to missing spring break to swim at nationals.

Perhaps you recall seeing us running up frat row half naked in our Speedos on a Saturday morning? We fondly call that the Run-Swim-Run. Known around campus as "the cult", occasionally wearing the big parkas and sleeping at the DUC there is a lot that is not seen by the public eye.

Beginning with the 6 a.m. stadium runs and early morning dynamic stretching, tear jerking laughter in the crowded locker rooms, to the comfort of a simple glance from a teammate that lets you know your pain is shared. We have learned life long lessons of hard work, humor, pushing all the limits, and have recognized the short-term nature of a thing called success.

It isn’t a secret how close athletes get to one another as teammates, competitors, and mentors. From my experience, swimmers tend to go a little over the top at times.

With a reputation of having quite the exclusive cult around campus, the swim team’s time with each other only reinforces values that all of us as athletes share. We just do so in the water when most everyone else is smart enough to stay dry.

Some people might consider our time and dedication to our sports as ridiculous and unnecessary in the large scheme of things. Perhaps they're right. But ridiculousness is what we’re all about.

We do ridiculous things that normal people don’t do. We take life to the next level. With a combined 56 years of swimming, we have experienced first hand the difficulties, excitement, pain, success, exhaustion, and joy that the sport has to offer.

We have put forth sweat and tears to rise to our positions now as the graduating seniors from the Emory women’s swim team, and we enter back into a life where our time is not dominated by daily morning and afternoon and Saturday practices.

We know what it means to work hard at something you love and believe in. We have and it has been the greatest accomplishment of our lives but it won’t be the last.

We would like to thank everyone for making our time here at Emory unforgettable and thank you to those who pushed us past our limits. We expected nothing less and we were never for a moment, let down.

Tracy Shessler is a senior from North Andover, Mass. She would love to answer e-mail questions from Emory recruits and fans.