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If you watched the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, you probably know that Michael Phelps out-touched Milorad Cavic by 0.01 seconds in the 100 meter butterfly. I remember watching this race and thinking that nothing in my own life would ever be dictated by a mere fraction of a second. Oh boy, was I ever wrong.

The Hastings High School swim season this year proved to be many things. With Ed Rief no longer the head coach, Anne Hessler (the assistant coach for the last two years) stepped up to the plate. She decided to implement two-a-day practices for the first week and a half of the season. That meant we had to be in the water, ready to start warm ups at 6:00 A.M. sharp. That’s right…I was in the pool, and probably already swam over 1,000 yards with my teammates by the time you got out of bed. We usually got done around 7:30, and then left to get ready for school. Then, from 4:05-5:30, we were in the pool again.

Those were probably the longest eight days of my entire life. There were some mornings where I definitely wished I could have just slept in, but I forced myself out of bed and went anyway. There was no way I was going to let my teammates be getting better, faster, and stronger without me.

All of that hard work paid off—at our first meet of the season both of our relays were already a whole second and a half faster than last year. That was a really great meet, and we got really into it. In the meets after that though, we kind of hit a brick wall. We really didn’t go slower, but we didn’t go faster either. That was very frustrating for all of us. At the Cotter Invite, junior Dakota Soucie made an automatic state cut for the 100 breast stroke. We tried to feed off his energy and success, but we were still swimming about the same times.

Before we knew it, it was Christmas break. Holiday practices proved to be challenging. If you think it takes a long time to sing “12 Days of Christmas”, you should try swimming a work out based off that concept. Now THAT takes forever! Nevertheless, we were at the pool at 6:00 A.M. every day after the Moratorium, working our tails off. We had “drag day” practices where we had to wear shirts for the entire swimming workout. Having that extra weight really slowed us down and made us work a lot harder.

After the holidays, freshman Elaine Streff (who was previously out of competing due to injury), was able to start swimming in meets again. We made some adjustments to our relays so she could be a part of them. In our first meet with the new relay team, we cut 5 seconds off our old medley relay time. We all swam personal bests on our splits, and our relay exchanges were very smooth.

Our 200 free relay rocked my world. I remember watching junior Jaimie Fast swim in for me and feeling more “in the zone” then I ever had before. I timed my start perfectly, and as soon as I hit the water, it was like time had stopped. I went almost 25 yards before I took a breath. During that race, I thought about nothing but moving my body through the water as fast as physically possible. I didn’t breathe at all the whole second length of the pool. When I approached the wall in the deep end, I finished harder than I ever had before. Elaine dove in over me as I came up for air and experienced the sweet relief of being able to breathe at my own rate again. Elaine swam her leg really strong, and then our junior anchor, Julie McCarthy finished it up. She threw her body into the wall at the end, and we all looked up at the timing system. Our relay had finished with a time of 1:49.82. Our school record for that event is 1:49.42. We only missed it by 0.4 on our first try.

After that, we were all kind of in a daze. We were obsessed with breaking that record. If we broke it, it was almost guaranteed that we would be in for state. Dakota was already going, and we really wanted to go too, so the girls’ side would have some representation.

Try as we might, we just couldn’t swim as fast as we did on that day. We had some setbacks—there was one meet that Julie couldn’t attend. One meet got cancelled due to the weather, and we never got a chance to make it up. I was out of practice for a few days due to medical reasons. In the last two weeks of the regular season, Elaine got hurt again and wasn’t able to compete.

I’d be lying if I said that we weren’t disappointed. To have our names engraved on the record board for the whole school to see, and to have gotten to compete at state would’ve been pretty sweet. The girls’ side of things did end up getting some representation at state—Jaimie went for the 100 backstroke. Dakota also got to swim the 200 I.M. in addition to his breast stroke.

I know that some people are just going to say “Oh well. This was a rebuilding year anyway,” and chalk up a loss. But we didn’t lose anything. We gained. We worked hard with Anne, and had some great improvements from last year. We cut a lot of time off both relays, and our future for next season is looking pretty bright. The four of us on that relay swim for Hastings YMCA Aquatics Club (HYAC) in the summer, and will have a great opportunity to train together and push each other to get better.

From this whole experience, I learned just how valuable time is. Even a fraction of a second should never be taken for granted. For Olympic athletes like Milorad Cavic, or even for a group of teenage athletes here in Hastings, Nebraska, a small amount of time can make all the difference in the world.

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About the author: Kelli Poplau

Kelli Poplau is a native of Hastings and a sophomore at Hastings Senior High. Involved in volleyball, swimming, tennis, and yearbook, Kelli is a busy student athlete. She spends much of her time in the pool, training with both Hastings YMCA Aquatics Club and the Hastings High swim team. When she’s not studying or at practice, Kelli enjoys reading, writing, making jewelry, and finding things to do around the community with her friends. She loves living in a small town where everybody knows each other, and wouldn’t trade it for the world.