The Why I

Water has always been part of my life.

I started swimming when I was four years old, and from that moment on, the pool became my happiest place. There’s a unique sense of calm and serenity that exists in the water, a quiet that’s hard to explain unless you’ve felt it yourself. There’s also something special about swimmers. How do we find peace, motivation, and purpose staring at a black line for hours, pushing our bodies to do more, to be better? Somehow, we do. I don’t expect everyone to understand that feeling, but it has shaped who I am.

I swam competitively from the age of eight until my final race at the NCAA Nationals in Indianapolis in 2019, swimming the last leg of the 4x100 medley relay. It was the first ever relay appearance at a national level in the history of Lynn University. Ironically, after four years of college trying to prove myself as a backstroker, chasing national cuts in the 100 and 200 backstroke, I found myself racing the 100 freestyle for my last race ever at a national level. That’s college swimming in a nutshell: unexpected, demanding, intense, and incredibly rewarding all at once. It challenges you at every level, but it also makes you feel capable of anything.

I left Spain when I was barely 18 years old. Eleven years later, I still haven’t returned to live there.

Don’t worry, this won’t be a blog about my entire experience swimming and studying in the U.S. But I do want to use that chapter of my life as a foundation to build something meaningful, something that helps swimmers who are standing exactly where I once stood.

I often look back to that version of myself 11 years ago. I think about how I felt, how my parents felt, and how unreal it was that I managed to leave everything behind, pack one suitcase, and get on a plane to Charlotte, North Carolina, a place that felt completely random at the time. Those were the worst three flights of my life. I was sick to my stomach, jet-lagged, exhausted beyond words, and suddenly very aware that my English wasn’t as good as I thought once I heard Americans speak.

And yet, in the middle of all that chaos and uncertainty, I met my best friend Sarah there, in that airport, waiting for the same ride as me to take us to the campus.

Eleven years of friendship later, we rarely see each other, maybe once or twice a year, and sometimes not even that, but we stay in touch constantly. But the stories we’ve created together?! From living in the same tiny college dorm room for four years, to climbing the highest peak in Africa, amongst a million more… Those stories alone could fill a book. But that’s college for you! You meet people from miles away, and together you embark on the biggest adventure of your life. Not to mention, she helped me a ton with my English.

I realize I’m starting to drift, but that’s part of why this first post exists… 

And this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for the next blog, where I’ll share how it all started and the experiences that inspired me to embark on this journey. [...]