Second place is first to lose.

At the age of five my parents signed me up for out local rec swim team. Little did I know I would continue to competitively swim for the next 13 years of my life. The six-word sentence that I came up with was, Second place is first to lose.  Typically there are 8 swimmers to an event and the top 3 times wins either a ribbon or a medal. Over the years as we all got older and the races began to become a bit more serious the same statement would always play through my head; Second place is first to lose.  Second place as a child was such an exciting thing because it still meant that you beat 6 other girls. As the years go by and you are in the top heat racing for the last open seat to swim at states, second place is the worst possible thing you could get. In a swimmers eyes second place means that all those countless hours spent in the pool morning and night seem to be a waste. It is the most devastating moment when you’ve just finished your race, rip your goggles off your face, and look at the time bored only to find that you were milliseconds away from receiving the gold. At this moment in time you have to accept that you were the first to lose.

- Tori