I grew up in a condominium complex that had a pool, and many of my favorite childhood memories are centered around the hours I spent swimming there.
Fun fact: I have never taken a swim lesson! My dad taught me to swim when I was a little girl. One summer day when I was probably 3 or 4, my dad took off my water wings, threw me in the pool, and I managed to stay afloat. As I became a more competent swimmer, my dad began encouraging me to swim the ~15 yards across the pool by bribing me with 5 cents per lap.
As a highly-motivated, people-pleasing, overachiever (yes, even as a young child), I rose to the occasion. I capitalized on the opportunity to earn money doing something I genuinely loved, and for a nominal fee, my dad got to spend his summer days poolside with a 6 pack of beer, watching his high-energy child swim herself to near exhaustion. It was a winning situation all around.
The only relative downside to this arrangement was that I never wanted to get out of the pool. I would swim laps for hours as I dodged my brothers and the neighborhood kids playing games, entirely uninterested in spending time with my friends. I have a tendency to become intensely obsessed with things that I enjoy, but I don’t believe either of us fully realized this at the time. Though it was a challenge to get me to stop swimming, I would be beaming on the walk back home, especially on days where I set a new record for most laps swam.
I continued to swim in the neighborhood pool each summer while playing various sports throughout the school year. Unfortunately, I had developed Osgood-Schlatter Disease in both knees, and while not very serious medical condition, it did make it so that running was quite painful. I decided to join a local swim team the summer before my freshman year of high school to give my knees a break. I was teased at my first practice because I showed up without a swim cap. I didn’t even know what a swim cap was! Things improved from there, and at the end of the summer, I earned the “Most Improved” award. Yes, I still have the medal.
I tried out for the high school swim team and made Junior Varsity my freshman year. At the end of the season, my high school coach became the head coach of my summer league team. It was as if my freshman swim season was being extended by 3 months. I worked well with Brian, and his coaching was instrumental in helping me drop time throughout the summer. I returned for my sophomore year of high school one of the fastest 50 and 100 freestylers on the Varsity Team. I swam all four years of high school, and was looking forward to continuing my swimming career in college.
I joined the college swim team, but had a lot going on in my personal life that made it challenging to adjust to my new team and coaches. I sadly ended up falling out of love with the sport and a few months into my sophomore year, I quit. This was a complicated decision, and it took years to repair my relationship with swimming. Through my later college and early post graduate years, I joined three different USMS teams, all of which I only swam with for brief periods of time before again walking away from the pool deck. I missed the joys of swimming and feeling connected to the water, but I just couldn’t find my way back.
Seven years passed before I started to feel interested in swimming again. However, it was March 2020, so my personal fitness goals were thwarted by the Covid-19 pandemic. With no immediate pool swimming prospects, I decided to plunge into the frigid waters of the San Francisco Bay. I had never seen anybody swimming at the Berkeley Marina, but I was willing to give it a try. I started swimming in a full wetsuit in April, transitioned to a sleeveless wetsuit in May, and had decided I was a skins swimmer by June. I slowly met friends in the open water swimming community, many of whom were pandemic pool transplants, all of whom loved the water.
In November 2020, I swam 6.2 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge with Pacific Open Water Swim Company. This swim inadvertently introduced me to the concept of marathon swimming and solidified my newfound love for the open water. I continued to swim at various locations in the East Bay throughout 2021, and found a USMS team that feels like home. I also joined the South End Rowing Club in San Francisco, where I met a truly wonderful group of swimmers who challenge and inspire me.
Who could have predicted that all of those hours spent swimming laps in my neighborhood pool would be the catalyst for me eventually swimming across ocean channels? ✨
Kerianne Swims 