What You Learn from Judging

It was a stab in my stomach when I heard the news; I was going to change from the swimming club where I used to swim. Since I have memory I had been swimming in the same swimming club for more than nine years. I had made very good friends and we have had great times together practicing our favorite sport, swimming. I didn’t want to leave a place that was part of me, but at last my mom I opened my mind and accepted to make a change.

My parents took my sister and me to Acuatica Slowing, a sport club. It was bigger than my old club. As we entered we realized that it was bigger than we thought. We entered through a glass door, and I saw a wonderful pool. It was one of the biggest pool I’ve ever seen, with the most crystalline water, surrounded by an antiskid and with the typical smell of the chlorine they use to clean pools; It had eight lanes and each lane had a block (the thing from where you jump to the pools), at the end of the pool was a rack with fins, paddles, kick boards and pulls (items that help you improve your swimming). My father got very fascinated with the pool, so did I, and enrolled us to the club.  The receptionist showed us the pool’s rules; what most attracted my attention was that there were three lanes were the training team was swimming, and then I saw the trainer. Her name is Karin Slowing; she is white colored with black eyes, which were outlined, black long hair, not very tall. She went to the Olympics in Athens, then trained her sister who went to the Olympics too and now she is training her eleven year old daughter Valerie and wants to take her to the Olympics next year. I didn’t believe that she went to the Olympics because she is chubby. But what I first saw was her face expressions, she seemed to be mad or angry, and that she was very concentrated in what the team was making. She was sitting at a white, plastic chair at the end of the pool, she stand up and started talking with my parents, while I was appreciating the rest of the place; then we left.

The next day I started swimming at this club, but I didn’t started with the team, because Karin thought that my sister and I needed to start with the techniques.  The weeks passed, and I continued swimming with Tracy, the technique teacher. One day thought it was going to be a normal class day, when suddenly Karin told me to swim with the team. In that moment I got a lot of feelings at the same time, I got very happy because I was going to swim with the team, but also I got really nervous to swim with them. My first class with the team was very exhausting, I swam five kilometers, and after I took a bath, I fall asleep.

The next classes were very exhausting. I made new friends at the pool and we tried to make the training together, but when we stopped and started talking, Karin scolded us, sometimes she just give us a strong rebuke, but when she was mad, she gave us a punishment that consisted in repeating the training series where we started talking and sometimes it was to make five-hundred meters fly style that, in my opinion, is the hardest one. But when you made a good training, you give all your effort, Karin was a really good person; we make jokes together, and trained at the same time. Now I understand why she most of the time is mad, and is because she wants her team to shine, and specially she really wants to take her daughter, Valery, to the Olympics. She is a determined person and wants to achieve her goals. She helped me to improve my endurance, and taught me one important lesson for life, that if you want to achieve your dreams you really have to demonstrate that you really want them. I thought Karin was a person with bad attitude that only wanted to exploit athletes, but she is a really nice person. Now I’m not swimming with her any more but I really miss my friends, and miss her too, and even thou the trains were to sleep for more than a week, I miss them too.

I really appreciated Karin because her attitude is the kind of attitude that makes people give more than what they think they can give, also I admire her effort for achieving her goals and the goals she has achieved. And from that time I learned that you don’t have to judge a person before knowing him or her, because you may be mistaken about that person.