I have spent most of my life involved in sports. I’ve participated in basketball, baseball, lacrosse, soccer, and, most importantly, swimming. All of the coaches I’ve had never made me feel important to a team, taught me persistence or showed me how to be a better person like my swim coach, Kevin Ewald. He not only has shown me how to be a better athlete but also has been a role model to me and someone I can count on. His words of encouragement have helped me navigate life in and out of the pool. He has been my coach, but also my friend.

He said, “This team is about being supportive of one another. No matter how good that person is at swimming, support each other. It is also about becoming better athletes, better people and having fun.”

It was the first day of practice my freshman year, and I could already tell that Kevin was a different kind of coach than I had ever had. Everyone jumped in the pool and started the workouts. Coming into the pool for the first day of practice, I thought it was going to be just like another day of being part of the club swim team. The coach would give us random workouts that my friends and I would only do half of, and then, the coach would wait off to the side for us to finish. I was taken by surprise when Kevin told us what this team was about. “This team wasn’t about putting in half the effort and calling it quits, this team was about putting in hard work and getting the results you wanted out of it,” he stated emphatically.

Kevin took the team seriously. He put all his time and effort into the team. Kevin took off of work every year during the season so that he could be our coach in the pool and out. He gave us his personal number so we could communicate with him. He called and texted each of us outside of practice so that he knew what was going on in our personal lives and how we felt about the season. Kevin even set up one-on-one meetings with each one of us to sit down and talk about anything we wanted to.

I will forever remember junior year at Conference. I came off of a disappointing sixth place finish in the 200-yard freestyle, and my next race was the 100-yard breaststroke. The 200-yard freestyle was my main swim. I was conference champion in it the year before and expected to win it again. After losing in my main swim, I thought I wouldn’t finish out the meet with anything good. I saw it as the end of my racing. I tried to get ready for my next race but couldn’t stop thinking about how I had let go of my previous race.

That's when Kevin (like a life jacket saved me from drowning in fast rapids) saved me from my doubt. He noticed I couldn’t get the loss out of my head. He could tell when something wasn’t right. Kevin told me how proud he was of me to come back from being sick for two weeks and not being able to swim and still place podium. He told me about how I scared the other teams because I placed in a position where I wasn’t supposed to make the podium. He said, “You might think that just because you didn’t get first means your done, but that's not true. I see someone who has put in a lot of hard work to win and won’t let anyone get in his way of reaching first.” Even though his top swimmers were racing, he continued to talk to me. He continued to tell me how I was going to win.

I ended the meet winning the 100-yard breaststroke. I won’t remember that meet for just winning one of my races but for understanding what Kevin Ewald does for me and all the other swimmers on our team. How he supports us and is always there for us. He taught me how to be a better athlete, but also how to be a better person. I can’t imagine that I will ever have a coach like Kevin again. He will forever be the best coach I had, and I am honored and feel lucky to have had him as my coach.