I Learned Way More Being a Coach Than an Athlete. Let me Explain(D.14)

Throughout all four years of high school, I was a competitive year-round swimmer. I would wake up at 4:20 AM, drive myself in any midwest, whether you can imagine, to a freezing-cold pool across town. From there, I would stare at a black line on the bottom of the pool and swim hours of laps before school. This was never a “fun” schedule, but it allowed me to go from a rookie freshman to a top-ranked state swimmer by the end of my senior year. I learned a lot from being a competitive swimmer. I got to meet and race some of the fastest people in the world. It taught me self-discipline, sportsmanship, and mental strength. I was offered many scholarships to colleges for the sport but soon decided to take a gap year before college and find myself. Years later, I found myself swimming laps most mornings, but this time for fun. I still felt like something was missing from my morning workouts — the sense of being on a team, competition, and overall the sport of swimming. I was too old to go back to competitive teams, so I decided to coach one. To this day, it has been one of the best decisions of my life, let me explain.

Photo by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash

I never thought I would become a coach of anything. Not that coaching is good or bad. It just never crossed my mind. Eight months after starting my first company, I was consumed. Every waking moment I was thinking…