Once a Swimmer, Always a Terp

There is something exhilarating about racing. Your heart beating in your ears, every limb on fire, digging in to out-touch the swimmer in the lane next to you, everything you’ve worked for all season coming down to hundredths of a second.  That’s what made swimming my passion until my team was eliminated this season. My senior year of college.

I started swimming competitively when I was 8 years old. My neighbor joined the summer-league team, and I wanted to beat her. I won my first race that summer and from there, there was no looking back. I fell in love with the sport.

I dedicated myself to the pool, setting a goal that I wanted to swim in college early on. That meant waking up at 4 a.m. for morning practices in middle school, traveling and competing on the weekends and spending enough time at the pool that my ‘perfume’ became the chlorine. But to me, the satisfaction of getting a best time, the weight of a medal around my neck and goofing around with my teammates made up for any sacrifice I had made to swim.

That hard work paid off for me when I finally signed with the University of Maryland Terrapins. When I visited the University of Maryland and found the combination of strong academics and big-time athletics, I knew it was the place for me. The team, the coaches, the facilities, the classes . . . everything seemed perfect. I could never have envisioned what the next three years would hold for me.

Swimming in college was a lot of hard work.  We practiced nine times a week, had weight-lifting sessions and conditioning sessions two to three times a week and spent weekends competing, traveling and recruiting. But being able to race, represent the school in the NCAA and be a college athlete was a lot of fun.

My freshman and sophomore year, we improved in the ACC and excelled. Going into my junior year, the team was more determined than ever to reach higher goals. We were moving up in the rankings, swimming best times and breaking records. But what happened in the first month of our season would become our biggest hurdle yet.

It wasn’t unusual for our coach to call a meeting before practice. But when we walked into the room and saw men in suits and the athletic director, it was clear something was gravely wrong. I never thought the women’s swim team would be cut. We were a top- 25 team. We had a good team grade point average.   We were good for the university. But that wasn’t enough.

The moment Kevin Anderson said there was a proposal to cut the men’s and women’s swimming teams for 2012-2013, that this (2012) would be our last season, I felt my world crash down. How could someone tell me and my teammates that all our  hard work, all our sweat, tears and hours in the pool, my goals for senior year, were gone just like that? The room was tense and emotional. Some people sat silent, others had questions and many tried to fight back tears. Afterwards in the locker room, no one could.

We had so many questions, few which the athletic department could answer. Mainly, what would happen to us and what could be done to save our team. I don’t think it’s possible to put into words the mentality of the team at that point. What I think describes it best is this: Our coach gave us the option to not practice that afternoon. Most of us put on caps and goggles and dove in the water.

On a college team more than any other level, your team is your family. Being an athlete and a swimmer is your identity. You live with these girls, you go to classes, you study, you eat and you spend most of your free time with them. The sport becomes your entire world. The news that this was our last season only made us more determined to practice hard, swim fast and come together as a team. We hung a sign in our locker room that became our team motto for the season:  “Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.”

Our team being cut brought the entire swimming community across the nation together. Within a week teams started sending us pictures and videos holding signs and chanting “Save the Terps!” The support was overwhelming. Everyone from college teams to high school and club teams sent photos. At one meet, all the other teams we swam against wore red caps to show their support. There are really no words for the feeling that so many people supported us.

We were able to negotiate a fundraising deal. We raise money and we save the team. We had a fundraising board that worked tirelessly to come up with financial plans and donors. At first, we were optimistic, but as the season ended, it became more and more clear that we were not going to be able to raise enough money.

I mentally prepared myself for my last race in the spring. It was the 200 meter breaststroke. Standing behind the block, I thought of all the years I spent practicing and racing coming down to these couple minutes. I finished my season a winning race. When I touched the wall, it was a bittersweet feeling. I was so proud of everything I accomplished, but I couldn’t help feeling a little heartbroken that my swimming career was  over –  ending on these terms.

Everyone asks me now if I ever thought of transferring. And I absolutely did. But the reality was, it didn’t make sense academically to transfer. I was in a great journalism program and would lose too many credits had I left.

But I believe more than anything else, and even through this mess, that everything happens for a reason. It was hard to see that then and sometimes it’s still hard to see now, but I hold onto that.  I told myself I could have the biggest pity party my senior year,   or I could make the most of my last year in college.   I could do everything in college that I sacrificed for swimming, and put all the effort that I focused on the pools into my second passion- journalism.

I received an internship with the CBS News Political Unit in Washington, D.C. As a news-junkie and aspiring journalist, this was a golden opportunity. It kept me so busy, I barely had a second to think about the fact I wasn’t in the pool prepping for my senior year. I continued interning with CBS in the fall, but switched to “The Evening News with Scott Pelley.” Finally this spring, I joined the University of Maryland student-staffed Capital News Service as a reporter. All of these jobs gave me a taste of the journalism world outside the college’s walls and made me more excited than ever to start a new chapter of my life. I couldn’t have asked for better experiences.

It’s hard not to feel angry and betrayed by the university’s athletic department. Still,  at  the end of the day, I will always be a Terp.

Haley Bull is a senior in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.