On this Father’s day I would like to tell you what my Dad has done for me in regards to swimming. First and foremost I would like to thank my entire family for the sacrifices that were made in order to have me swim at the level that I did. Sacrifices that included hardly ever taking a family vacation except if it involved a swim meet, my Mother’s endless hours in the car, either driving to swim practice or waiting for me during, my brother who cooked dinner for us nightly because my Mother was in the car. For all of this I am forever grateful.

My Father’s role during my swimming career was that of “the organizer”. He made sure that I was entered into every swim meet that I needed to attend, in a timely fashion. He dictated all of the pertinent information to my Mother, who would type all of my consolidated entry forms to be submitted. This was very unusual. When it was time for a race, you would stand at the board where the meet director would post all of these entry forms for you to take to the timers at the beginning of the race. I always felt so lucky. My consolidated entry form was always easy to spot because it was the only one typed, not handwritten. This is one small advantage I had because of the help of my Dad. I thank him for this.

When I out grew the team that I was swimming on. My Dad researched another team that would better suit my swimming ambitions. The team that they chose for me was over an hour drive from where we lived. I remember the first day that my Mother was going to drive me to my new team to try it out. My Dad had left a map that he had made for us. Similar to what you would find on Google maps today. Except he had hand drawn it, highlighted the proper path, left us notes of points of interest along the way and had given us a second course we could take home to see which one we liked best. I thank him for this.

My Dad was my archivist during my time age group swimming. To this day I still have the countless books, logs, and scrapbooks that he made in order to organize all of the information. Can you believe that I have data for every single swim I did starting at age 4. The data contains my time, place, who I swam against, where it was… it is unbelievable. He never gave up on collecting this data. My scrapbooks are complete from the time I started swimming to my last race. I thank him for this.

Recently he sent me a book that he had made for me recounting my swim from the Golden Gate Bridge to the San Mateo Bridge. It contained photos chronicling the swim, my time, who was on my crew…once again exemplifying his amazing skill at keeping track of my swimming. Most of all it showed how proud he was of me. I thank him for this.

These are just a few examples of what my Dad has done for me and my swimming. So, on this Father’s day I am thankful to my Dad for all that he has done, shown me and taught me. I only wish I was as organized as him!