It was the summer of ’08 when I watched the great Micheal Phelps sweep the Olympics winning 8 straight gold medals — breaking the medal record. I couldn’t help but pretend to put my 6-year old self in the position of him looking up and being the face of America. Every 6-year-old’s biggest dream is growing up and being just like their childhood idol. Therefore, I enrolled in the swim team the next day, holding in my mind the goal of becoming the next Micheal Phelps. I started from the bottom and stayed at the bottom and stayed at the bottom for as long as I can remember. Things didn’t look good for me until my growth spurt and I grew 5 inches in one summer. Up until then I never dropped time, I stayed constant but never dropped, after that summer time started to drop so fast that I couldn’t even keep track. But as time went on, my times stopped dropping and I became consistent again, not knowing if I will grow again so I plateaued out. All the years before I would never expect this to happen ever because I thought hard work could make you improve no matter what. I believe it is very important to be inspired by something but as time passes on and we all grow older we slowly realize that in reality many of our dreams when we were younger become less and less likely to happen. As we grow up we are presented with more and more obstacles some of which cannot be controlled by that individual, and no matter how hard they work genetics prevails. I began to realize this when I started to age into my teenage years, my parents were never the athletic type plus I was not supposed to be exceptionally tall either. Despite the odds, Southlake Carroll creates an idea that no matter how fast or how slow you are, you are still part of something greater. Being a part of the Dragon Swimming team taught me to “Trust the Process” and never doubt how great you can be, because the team will always be there for you. This is carried throughout our team as every person on our team cares about each other uplifting one another when they are down.As a team we build eachother up and tear eachother down. This past year we lost our state championship, as a team we did poorly at regionals which impacted the amount of state swims we had. But I know that next year we’ll come back stronger than before.