When a 13 year old starts swimming on a team in a lane with 5 year olds,  it's more than evident to them that they are starting at the very bottom. There is no escaping it, you know you are slow. Everyone my age was swimming much faster, several lanes over. This was overwhelming to me at first, because when you haven't been a competitive swimmer, you immediately see how hard it is to swim fast. It takes a tremendous amount of work. You will find yourself pushing through a lot of sensations that are not always pleasant. For months I felt like I was drowning.

Theodore D. Young Community Center in Greenburgh NY

The year was 1987 and desegregation had hit Yonkers public schools. Without desegregation, I  never would have known the racism that existed in Yonkers. In my own neighborhood I learned that a fence and land barrier was created to keep "black traffic" from Runyon Heights out of Homefield.  Through the years I attended grammar school 1979-1986 the racial mix that was the norm for a classroom in North Yonkers would be 1 black child, maybe 2 at most. In 1987 classes ceased to be all white.

Because of desegregation I was bused to South Yonkers. I was in the "High and Wide" track that became known as Pearls. It was in an accelerated program for the "gifted".  My family thought it was wise to stay in this program because there were rumors that Emerson would become "rough". Because of this I went to Hawthorne for 8th grade and my Freshman year of High School.

Nicole Ryan was one of the classmates that I would ride the bus with to school. I'd stop off at her apartment sometimes to have a snack before walking home. Our mothers had been friends ever since grade school. She had swam on the Silver Streaks swim team for a few years and her mother had suggested to mine that we go to tryouts during July of 1987. Bobby Ryan's theory was, if you keep your kids busy, it's hard for them to get into trouble. A swim team is a great way to do this because practice is 5 times a week and there are a lot of meets.

A Silver Streaks logo that was screened onto blue sweat pants. This was part of the team uniform at the time.

My sister and I went to tryouts during the month of July and were told that we made the team. My mother said, "Heather was a more desirable candidate because they could see the drive in her. She was younger and I was old to start swimming. They were willing to take us as a package and take a chance on me because they could see the potential in Heather".  It was really true. I was thirteen at the time and had never competitively swam before. I was really, really slow and did not have the natural drive to go fast at all. Heather was a dynamo and the type of kid that would get into practice or a race and swim her heart out until she threw up. Most likely every coaches dream.

I have a few memories of my time on the Streaks swimming at the Theodore Young Community Center as an age grouper. I can't tell which memories are from technique tryouts or team practice, everything blends together.

I do remember being put on a dry land machine to fix my freestyle stroke to have a pull that is more conducive for competitive swimming. I would do sets, wearing long flippers to learn the fly. Videos were also taken above the water so you could see what your stroke actually looked like.

Mr. and Mrs. Silverman

I remember Mrs. Silverman wearing a dark suit in the water working on my breaststroke kick. She would grab my ankles and move them into the proper positions. Flex, turnout, whip, together, was repeated over and over until I got the feel for a legal breaststroke kick. She is the reason that I don't kick illegally today. She had a lot of patience and really wanted you to be your best.

Mr. Silverman was coaching the team when I started out in the lane with the 5 year olds. It takes a lot of work to be able to swim fast and I was amazed at how fast these 5 year olds where when I started swimming with them. Imagine a 13 year old who was just shy of 5' 10" swimming with these little kids, getting run over and essentially having her ass kicked. I"m sure it looked comical.

One day I was swimming in the 5 year old lane and I was struggling with kicking. I didn't understand how to kick and I was barely keeping up. The whole team was kicking in their lanes and Mr. Silverman blew the whistle. He stopped the whole pool, looked at me and pointed. "You! You're not kicking! Where is the white water?! What are you playing with your barbie dolls?!" and I thought to myself "How does he know"? (I was a very young 13 and still played with dolls.) After that I wondered if Mr. Silverman had the ability to see into your mind.

I also had a terrible fear of diving into the water. As I would fall into the water over and over again off the blocks, I remember the frustration on Mr. Silverman's face. You see, back then the blocks were on the shallow end of the pool so my fear wasn't totally off base. You had to dive into roughly 4 feet of water.

A summer in the 80's at Crystal Pond in Eastford, CT

I've always felt at total peace in the water. It creates a contagious state joy inside of me and as a child I really wished I could stay in the pool forever. As a teenager it always made me feel better and continues to do the same thing today as an adult. When the water hits my skin, that simple sensation, it washes away all the stress and the bad mojo that a day could possibly bring. My life truly needs to be connected to it, to be complete.

On March 24, 1974, I was introduced to my first pool by taking a tiny tots class with my mom. I'm not totally sure where it was, but it was in Yonkers. It could have been one of the Y's or Linden Street Pool (also know as Bath House No. 4) which has since been destroyed.


I spent a good portion of my childhood swimming. My mom would put me in summer swim lessons at Sprain Ridge Pool in Yonkers and in the fall I would swim at Ardsley Middle School (see video). My sister and I used to have so much fun at Sprain during the summer. There were two large pools at Sprain. One was more shallow and would hold 3 or 4 swim lessons at a time with a large wide water slide at the end of it. The other had a diving well with 3 diving boards. Two were standard and one was 15 feet high which was a right of passage to go off of. When you jumped off that board, it felt like you were falling forever. My mom would set up our camp at this pool and we would spend our time swimming between the two pools until about noon. Then my mother would say, "it's time to leave the rough element is coming in..." and home we went.

In August we would make our annual trip up to rural Eastford, CT where my mom was born and raised. We would stay in a rustic cabin with no drinkable water or shower for two weeks and have a blast. Jumping off the dock, staying in the water until your lips turned blue, swimming with your clothes on, canoe rides, blow up raft explorations, snorkeling and fishing occupied our days. There was no phone and the T.V. featured limited reception.

As you can see I was in the water a lot as a kid considering I wasn't on a swim team. And from the video you'll see that no one starts out swimming really well. It truly takes a ton time, training and hard work.

So during all this lesson taking, instructor's would recommend that I be put on a swim team. My mom would ask me, "Do you want to be on a swim team?" I would reply with a, "Why"? And she would say, with an unsure voice, "Because you can win ribbons".  I would say, "I don't need ribbons. I don't think I want to join. I don't see the point."

I didn't understand what a swim team would really be about because I never participated in any team sports. Swimming competitively definitely isn't about just winning ribbons. In fact, swimming competitively is not always about winning. It's about learning how to lose and loose well. It's about testing yourself as a human-being physically, forging human relationships, working with team members, learning to be part of  a team, and ultimately learning an incredible amount about yourself by discovering the potential of what you will be able to do for the rest of your future life.

I wish I had understood this and if I could travel back in time, this point would definitely be one of my stop offs. I would say, "Listen, you have a great opportunity here. Join a team and find out what you can do. Don't be scared. Trust me it will be worth it. And whatever happens do not leave no matter what. Fight to stay, you won't regret it." If I had started when I was 5 on a competitive team and continued through to college, I would have loved to have seen what could have been possible.

But I was a different kid.

I never fit in. Public School became highly unpleasant for me after kindergarten (kindergarten was private). I was the kind of kid that went to museums, listened to classic music and had never heard of Elvis, had nothing to do with sports, created Indian huts, played in the woods, fished, hunted unicorns, shot bows and arrows, believed in nature as your god and that magic did exist, had conversations with my stuffed animals and convinced teachers that I thought they came to life at night (my mother was called in on that one), dressed up in costumes, painted, sculpted, put on shows. drew and was totally taken in by anything fantastical and was really barely social. Mostly because few understood my "world" and were I was coming from. My demeanor came off as aloof and was misinterpreted. I was terribly shy and introverted. This was partially due to the fact that I approached kids with a more adult mindset and was also teased unmercifully.

Because of this, anytime a social offering was presented before me, I totally avoided it. My mom tried to send me to camp but I was obstinate against that idea. I would tell her, "Sorry, I have projects to work on and I have no desire to make friends. I don't need friends." It's not that I didn't want to make friends truthfully it's that I didn't want to deal with the inevitable name calling and viciousness that I experienced all through grade school. I tend to be a sensitive soul and unfortunately school was not enjoyable for me as a whole. There were maybe 2-3 years of high school that were slightly better... well you get it.... school was never my thing.

As you can see, being on a competitive team and socializing didn't appeal to me in the slightest. At this time I never would have imagined I would have become a competitive swimmer in the future. It's really amazing the amount of changes I went though regarding this and how this was actually my mindset at one time in the past...

When given the right opportunity, with the right people... things can change.

Canoeing at Crystal Pond in Eastford, CT... 1980's

The year was 1991 and I had made sectionals. I was really excited. All I needed to do was break a low 28 for the 50 free and I would be going to States. For the first time I would be exclusively racing against women. I have vague memories of that day but I'll never forget the feeling. Missing States by tenths of a second... and just like that my competitive swimming journey ended or so I had thought at the time.



This loss was especially significant because I knew that I didn't have the right conditions to make states possible. I still tried but it just wasn't realistic. I didn't have the training background of most swimmers. At the time I was swimming for Roosevelt High School in Yonkers. We were lucky if we got into a pool that was 20 yards 3 times a week... 2 times a week was common. Mark Twain Junior High School had gotten a new pool in 1992, the year after I graduated.  It was bitter sweet watching my sister compete at All City Championships there the following year.

Little did I know that this loss would get locked in a vault behind some really thick emotional walls that wouldn't start to get unlocked until 13 years later.

This loss was the ember that fueled a competitive odyssey that spanned over a decade and still continues in some form today.

Week by week this story will unfold with the hopes to inspire others to not let age define them. With the right ember, anything is possible. :)