Second Place at the world championships...of swimming!

Okay, so I want to brag about a little girl that I taught to swim many many moons ago.

Little Sarah was 2 1/2 years old when her mom first started bringing her in for me to work with her. Sarah would have to be forcibly extricated from her mother's arms before every single class, screaming and crying the whole way. But Sarah was (at the time) the youngest of three (now she has a younger brother) and her mom was nonplussed and would do so every Sunday night at 6pm and then turn and walk out the door of the indoor pool, entrusting her toddler to me (I was just a young teenager at the time). Luckily, Sarah would stop crying the second her mother exited hearing range, haha!

I worked with Sarah as her primary coach for almost 10 years before I stopped teaching her during the winter as I was teaching at a different program then and eventually graduated from college and moved on and didn't get to see her in the summer either anymore. But I try to keep up with her competition success stories.

I'll never forget Sarah's mom approaching me when she was in middle school saying that all Sarah's coaches wanted her to quit her other sports and just focus on theirs (soccer, basketball, swimming, etc). My advice to her was to not let her specialize until high school and to let her pick at that time what she wanted to do. Well she's a swimmer through and through.

Last week Sarah received a SILVER MEDAL in one of her races at the Junior World Championships being held in Peru! I couldn't be more proud of how far she has come. Sarah was one of the kids representing the U.S. at the Junior World Championships. Not a bad way to start out her senior year of high school!

I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for her when the Olympic Trials roll around next summer and she gets the opportunity to take on all the adults!

Go Sarah!!! :)