LO 4 Show commitment to and perseverance in your CAS experiences

Being on the Swim Team has been an experience I have found very challenging. I was very honoured to be part of the SEASAC team in Grade 10 and was very surprised to have the opportunity again this year.

I knew that this would be an especailly difficult opportunity as I had decided to take a break from swimming at the end of grade 10 and was therefore had lost a lot of my fitness and was very out of practice. Neverthless, I decided to commit to being part of the SEASAC team knowing the difficulties.

What were my goals?

I knew that given my time off, I would not do as well as last year but I set out to try get into the finals for both of my butterfly events (50m butterfly and 100m butterfly).

I found it very challenging: the early morning starts, the intense trainings were physically demanding. This meant that achieving my goals required alot of perserverance and for me to commit to lots of training sessions.

How successful was I in achieving my goals? 

I ended up focussing on backstroke in training just as much as butterfly and was chosen to swim: 100m butterfly, 100m backstroke, 50m butterfly, 50m Backstroke.

At SEASAC itself I managed to get into the butterfly finals for both of my butterfly events as well as my backstroke events which was a huge surprise. I did not beat any of my personal bests in butterfly but I did swim my backstroke events faster than I have ever before.

What did I learn about myself through this experience? What abilities, attitudes and values have I developed?

Pushing my self to try my hardest at swimming one last time has given me the belief that I can overcome any difficult challenge I face. I have been a swimmer for as long as I can remember and I feel very priveledge to have had lots of the opportunities afforded to me. The skills of perseverance and commitment that I have learnt through swimming will definately give me the confidence to try new things and achieve what i set my mind to.