Going into the first day of swim practice I was nervous, upset, and annoyed. I was so flustered at the fact that my old coach couldn’t coach us this year. I didn’t know what to expect from this new coach. I thought he wasn’t going to be able to connect with me.
I opened the doors to the pool and I saw this kid looking up at me with short brown hair, decked out in Arrowhead Swim Team gear, with the biggest smile on his face, excited for the season to begin. Oh boy. Here we go, I thought.
Weeks later, as we were on our way to our first meet, I wasn’t excited about it. I knew I would have to swim an insane amount of yards. But when we got there, I saw something unlike anything I had seen before. Coach Caleb was jumping and leaping all the way down the pool yelling so the whole pool could hear him, just for one of the slowest swimmers to keep pushing. He didn’t care that this kid had no chance at winning that event. Coach wanted to push him as far as he could go.
There were some days that Coach Caleb knew weren’t quite my day. I wasn’t ready to get in the water, I didn’t want to work, or I was irritable. On some days, Coach would pull out a hose and spray me so I’d get in! I would be so agitated at first, but after the season, I realized why he did it. Each of the swimmers on the team needed a different way of motivation. Coach realized this and responded quickly for us to get the most out of practice.
Coach Caleb made a huge impact on our team because, in the past, our team had problems (the slower kids were friends and the faster kids were friends), but that didn’t happen this year. Everyone had each other’s backs and were there for each other, creating one, unified team. Coach was the rock that kept the team together.
In addition to coaching the Arrowhead Men’s Swim Team, Coach Caleb is a coach on the Lake Country Swim Team, and he is currently going to college for a degree in kinesiology. He would go to his classes in the mornings and come to the pool in the afternoons to coach all of his swimmers until eight or nine and start over the next day. Coach wasn’t only helping us create our lives, he was creating a life of his own.
Coach Caleb deserves this award because of how dedicated to swimmers he is, how much he cares about us succeeding, and because he takes so much time out of his busy day to work tirelessly for us to have the best season possible. I love Coach Caleb for everything he has done for me and will do for me in the future. I just hope to be able to do something for him one day.