by Stella Anderson Moye
Emma Born is a 14 year old swimmer from Mankato, Minnesota. Her swimming journey began with the basics of swim lessons like many others and worked her way up to the competitive level of swimming. Emma knew swimming would be her sport when she fell in love with “the competitive atmosphere, and always getting better and the teammates; being able to be coached and just the whole team.”
Emma joined the Mantas Swim club at age 8 and has stuck with them for the past 6 years. Swimming with the same people consistently for so long, Emma and her teammates have become close-knit. To her, the team is like family. Day in and day out, they share the same swim schedule as well as all the struggles and successes that are akin to swimming. Having teammates who Emma can rely on for a lighthearted laugh during challenging practices and still push her to be her best is an important aspect of training. Emma is able to find balance between pushing herself hard and enjoying the sport, acknowledging “when it’s go time, we’re racing each other. But after, we’re full of jokes.” At practices Emma and teammates “can have a good time. In between our sets, during, we’re always laughing.” and ultimately, a happy team is the team that is able to better work together for excellence inside and outside of the pool. Her favorite way to stay close with friends and work hard is by leaning into the competitive nature of the sport by making racing fun. Despite being a distancer, Emma’s favorite practice is sprint sets off the block, as it allows her to “strive for that competitiveness, to always race each other and compete.” She and her practice partners play around with different lane orders to get the opportunity to race a variety of people and give each other the healthy push that is needed.
The bond and support of the team carries over to meets. Like many others, Emma often finds herself nervous behind the block. Her advice is “don’t think about it. Only worry about it the moment before you’re swimming and try to have fun at the meet. Don’t let it consume you.” When faced with anxious moments, Emma deals with nerves by turning outwards to her team and finding someone to talk to or finding a swimmer in the water to support. She describes being a good teammate as “being there for each other, you support them and cheer them on consistently, but when it’s time to race, it’s time to race. But you’re always there during the good race and the bad.” Her aim is to be the best person she can be for herself and others and works to be the kind of person the people in her life would describe as “smiling, laughing, and hardworking.”
In such an individual sport, it’s often easy to overlook the people you spend so much time with and get lost worrying about the results of a meet. It’s important to take a step back to recognize and appreciate the value of sport itself and the people you share it with to remember why you initially joined. After getting to a point where she had pushed so hard, she didn’t love it, she took a look at the bigger picture and reminded herself this is the sport she loves and chose for a reason. Emma knows it can be difficult to continue challenging her limit without becoming too result focused as “people can get so sucked into their sport and forget to have fun with it. And that’s why we initially joined it, to have fun.” After suffering an injury and needing time out of water to recover, she realized just how important of an aspect swimming is in her life. The feeling of “sitting on the sideline” helped her find gratitude that her injury wasn’t more serious and gave her a renewed outlook on the sport. Ultimately despite long days at the pool and exhausting practices, swimming is her sport. Even on the days where going to practice may seem like more of a chore than enjoyment, she chooses to “walk through the doors and leave it all behind. All the guilt, all the bad days. You allow yourself to have fun and work hard. You leave it at the door.”