Relentless Spirit

by Missy Franklin

  But that was all starting to change, as I was meeting all these new people, and now that I was at Regis—making new friends, starting a new chapter—I caught myself taking those second looks and raised eyebrows to mean that others might question whether a “child of science” like me even belonged in those hallowed hallways.

  One day we were reading a passage from scripture. It was a passage that talked about how God the Father loves us more fully and abundantly than any kind of love we could comprehend on this earthly plane. I read these words and they were awe-inspiring. Heart-lifting. Mind-blowing. I caught myself thinking, How can someone love me more than my parents? How can that be? But with God, of course, all things were possible, as I was learning in this new environment. Still, I realized in this moment that the love of my parents knew no bounds as well. They had always been there for me, would always be there for me. No matter what I did, no matter how badly I messed up, they would always love me. Always, always, always. And I think it was because of the certainty of their love that I was able to make room in my heart for Jesus’s love. I got what that felt like, because it started with my mother and father. And let me tell you, all the love I knew my parents felt for me . . . to think that Jesus loved me even more than that . . . well, it was pretty incredible.

  I thought, How is that even possible?

  Coming into this world the way I did reinforced for me how loved I truly was. I felt that love every single day of my life. Knowing what my parents had gone through to have me, knowing how long they’d waited for me, what my mom had been through since she was thirteen years old, hearing that desperately sad diagnosis from that doctor in Nova Scotia—it was almost too much to think about. But here I was, thinking about it. Dwelling on it. Trying to live up to the gifts that had been bestowed upon me and my family.

  What’s funny, looking back, is that these realizations found me at a time when I needed them the most. When I started in at Regis, I caught myself thinking a great deal about the will of God. There was a lot of talk in our hallways, in our classrooms, about God’s plan, and being so young and naive I lined up all of this talk alongside some of the more hurtful things I’d heard out in the world. About the sanctity of the love between a husband and wife. About how there is only one way to make a family. But then, alongside all of that, I was able to make room in my thinking for the blessings that came with my birth. I lived in the light of my family, no question about it. And here I was, determined now to live in the light of God as well. And I had to believe that there was room on this earthly plane for both beams of light. I had to believe that I was here as part of God’s plan. In my own way, in my own time. That plan? To be a blessing to my parents, and to receive their blessings in return.

  God put me here for a reason. Of this I am firmly convinced. He brought me into this world exactly how he planned. And I wasn’t planning on wasting a single second of this gift of life.

  My At-the-Ready Moment

  2007 WESTERN SECTIONAL MEET—MOUNT HOOD, OREGON

  I have to admit, there were times when my swimming development ran ahead of my personal development. Here’s a good example: I was twelve years old and I’d just earned a spot as an alternate at my first sectional meet, an open-to-all-qualifiers competition with no age requirements. Most of the kids on the team were way older than me—by quite a bit—so it was a big adjustment. Aside from the swimming part, I was competing against girls who were older than me by half a lifetime. I was rooming with high school juniors and seniors, which right there can provide a bunch of learning experiences when you’re in sixth grade. In fact, there was high drama on this first sectionals trip because one of the girls had a boy up in her room, and of course she was breaking the strict rules we all had to follow about this type of stuff, so I was just wide-eyed, taking all of this in. Girls were running down the hallways, whispering to one another about how this one would be sent home or that one would be kicked off her team.

  Nobody was talking about her favorite Disney princess, as I recall. (Mine is Belle.)

  Up to this point, I had been swimming age-group meets—meaning, only with kids my own age, as opposed to an “open” or sectional meet, where I would be going up against anyone of any age who’d posted a qualifying time. I was used to being one of the top swimmers in my heat. I would usually find a way to make my presence known. The other kids were usually worried about me, instead of the other way around. Here, though, my times weren’t fast enough to put me on anyone’s radar. Nobody really knew who I was or cared that I was there. I was good enough to make it to the meet, but not quite good enough to get into the finals—not for this 100 free, anyway.

  When you’re an alternate, the idea is you’re supposed to be ready to swim if one of the girls has to drop out. It happens, from time to time—only, it never seemed to happen when I was in this spot. But you still have to prepare like you’re going to swim the race, up until the very last minute. You just never know how things will go. This means you have to swim your entire warm-up, which for me was the biggest adjustment of all. Why? Well, the competition pool could get pretty crowded, and everyone would just swim right over you.

  Now, it’s not like I was small and nobody could see me. By the time I was twelve, I was basically as tall as I am now, which is six feet two. But I had no idea how to handle the situation. I was used to little kids, all doing the same basic warm-up, moving in the same direction, as a team, but here you had athletes at the next level, doing more intense warm-ups. It was every man for himself. If you’re stopped in the middle of a lane—guess what? You’re going to get flipped on or run over. And then someone would yell at you for getting in the way. I just didn’t know how to act in that situation, how to protect myself. Other swimmers would be trampling over me like it was their job and I was in their way. If I so much as touched someone’s feet I would have started apologizing profusely and praying that they wouldn’t hate me forever. Frankly, I was terrified, and after a while my coach Todd Schmitz could see it was stressing me out, so he taught me my first “life hack” for swimmers at big-time meets, back before anyone was using the term. He taught me to warm up in the warm-down pool—a neat way to sidestep all the madness in the main pool.

  Over the years, I learned that this wasn’t so unusual. The warm-down pool also gets a lot of traffic before a race, but most swimmers look to do their warm-ups in the competition pool. They like to get a feel for where they’ll be swimming, so that’s where the most intense action takes place. People get pretty aggressive, and this was the first I was seeing it. Turns out there’s a whole warm-up etiquette that you’re just supposed to know, but at twelve years old I wasn’t aware, so all I knew was that I found the whole thing crazy intimidating. All I knew was that I was very much out of my comfort zone. And then, on top of all that, I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to warm up anyway, because I was just an alternate. I was so young and naive and inexperienced. All I knew was that if someone told me to be good and ready for a race, I was determined to be good and ready.

  When you’re first alternate, that means you’re in ninth place or seventeenth place on the depth chart, depending on the number of heats in the meet. If you’re in ninth place, and there’s a B final, the alternate status doesn’t really apply.

  (For those readers who don’t follow swimming too, too closely, a B final is like a runner-up final heat, where the ninth- through sixteenth-place swimmers compete. Sometimes, in large meets, there’s even a C or D final—but you don’t need me to explain the math on that, do you?)

  When you think about it, there aren’t a whole lot of situations that would put you in the pool as first alternate—at most meets there’s a scratch deadline, and if you fail to withdraw in a timely fashion there are penalties that come into play moving forward, so the only way you really get in the pool as a first alternate is if some unforeseen event happens, like someone getting sick at the last minute. Therefore, the closer you get to the start time,
it becomes less and less likely that you’ll be called on to swim. But at twelve years old, at my first big meet, I took my position as first alternate very seriously. I went through my whole warm-up in the other pool. Then I took my place behind the head official, ready to go, in case they called on me. I even had my goggles on, which was like way, way over the top in terms of preparedness. My parents still laugh about it—me, standing a little too close to the official, goggles in place, waiting for my name to be called. Much to my dismay, everyone showed up!

  The second time I was in this position came two years later, when I was fourteen. I was in Berlin, at a World Cup, representing the junior national team, and Coach Todd was part of the coaching staff, so I was a little more prepared for my “non-moment.” I’d been around the pool deck a few times by this point, so I had a much better idea of what to expect now.

  At one point, the race about to start, I noticed there was a swimmer missing in one of the lanes. Some girl who was supposed to be there just wasn’t there, for whatever reason. For a moment, I thought I’d be called on to swim, but nobody came looking for me. Nobody said my name. Nobody even moved to fill the spot—the seven remaining swimmers just lined up and waited for the whistle. I started freaking out. I didn’t know what to do. Was I supposed to just stand there? Tap the official on the shoulder and introduce myself? Sit back down on the bleachers?

  Finally, I decided that the thing to do was take charge. I was there to swim, right? I told myself I’d earned my way into this race. Yeah, I had only the ninth-best qualifying time, but now there looked to be this opening, so I wanted to swim in the A final. That’s where I thought I belonged, where I was supposed to be, so I approached the head official. In my head, I like to think I was this confident young swimmer, reaching for what was mine, but in reality I’m sure I came across as tentative, not at all sure what was expected of me in this spot. I said, “Hi, I’m Missy Franklin. I’m the first alternate, and there’s no one in that lane.”

  The official looked at me like I was some little kid—which I guess I was. He said, “That’s okay, sweetie. We’re all set.”

  Todd was furious, that I was being strung along in this way, but the meet was being televised and names had already been submitted.

  The race went off without me—with just seven swimmers and one empty lane. I was crushed, a little bit. Also, relieved, a little bit. I was ready and I wasn’t ready, I guess. I mean, I had my goggles on! But if I was really ready, I wouldn’t have been so uncertain. If I was really ready, I would have moved about the warm-up pool like I belonged no place else. I might not have pushed my way into the heat, because a lot of times a race will go off without a full lineup—because it’s easier for race officials to keep to a tight schedule and not take the time to call up an alternate. I might have been more comfortable in the warm-down pool, until I learned how to fight my way through a warm-up in the main pool, because it’s easier to make adjustments that allow you to avoid a difficulty instead of facing it head-on. But sometimes you just have to jump in the pool and go for it, and it took standing there on the pool deck, waiting anxiously for my name to be called, for me to start realizing this.

  I was getting there, but I wasn’t there yet. My time would come.

  THREE

  GROWING UP

  My father probably thought I was going to be a volleyball player. Or maybe a basketball player. He was all over it. We’d ski together, shoot hoops, toss around a football.

  Mom and I had a different relationship when it came to sports. She’d never played sports as a kid, but she wanted me to participate and have fun. In whatever ways she could, she helped to make that happen. She was the one who researched all the different leagues and clubs in the area, found teams and programs for me to join, met with coaches, got me registered and cleared, and shuttled me around town to buy my equipment.

  Swimming was just another activity. At first, it was something we could do as a family. We could all splash around at the beach, in the pool—even Mom! But early on, my parents could tell that I was super comfortable in the water. A lot of kids tense up before they jump into the pool. They worry the water will be too cold, or over their heads, or whatever. But not me. I’d just go for it. My mother signed up for a mommy-and-me swim class when I was six months old, so that became part of our routine, and to hear her tell it, as time went on, I was always the first one in the pool. I was in my element, I guess you could say. Mom, not so much, but she did it for me. Soon my parents started bringing me around to our neighborhood pool. In the summer, we were there almost every day.

  I loved every single sport I played as a kid. I loved being with my friends. I loved running around, competing. But swimming was different. I wouldn’t say I liked it better than soccer or volleyball or basketball. And I wouldn’t say I was any better at it than I might have been at those other sports. But it felt natural to me, being in the water. Like I belonged no place else. In the beginning, of course, the water was just another place to play, a different environment to master, but as I learned to dive and kick and propel myself along the surface, I began to think about swimming a little differently. It was like I was flying, almost—gliding through the water without a thought in my head other than the fact that I was gliding across the water. It was such a simple, magical feeling, and I loved it. The backstroke was always my favorite stroke. I called it “resting.” Any time I got tired I would simply flip over and “rest” and it was the most amazing thing. On my back, I could still feel like I was flying but with my head almost out of the water and my eyes wide-open. And I could breathe all the time! Bonus!

  As I got older, I learned to swim fast on my back. I could swim and soar and at the same time see what my friends were up to on the pool deck. It was a way to be alone with my thoughts and keep tabs on whatever else was going on—I didn’t want to miss a thing!

  After a while, I started to notice the other kids I’d been playing with at our neighborhood pool would get cold or distracted. They’d get in and out of the water, move on to something else, then jump back in to cool off. Me, I never wanted to leave the pool. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to towel off and run around with my friends, but there was something reassuring about being in the water. That feeling of flying . . . I never wanted to lose it. That feeling of being in my own little environment . . . I didn’t want to lose that, either. So while the other kids would eventually look for reasons to get out of the water, I’d be looking for reasons to stay in the water.

  When I was four years old, I told my mother I wanted to join our summer-league team, the Heritage Green Gators. Talk about a great reason to stay in the water! I was too young, it turned out, but that didn’t keep me from kicking up a little dust. I was really upset, so I threw my version of a temper tantrum. In my defense, it was hardly a tantrum. More like a persuasive argument. I didn’t kick or scream or fuss. I just made my case. But I couldn’t really argue my way past the age restrictions for summer-league swimming. The rules were clear. There was nothing my parents could do, except to teach me how to be a little more patient (still working on that!) and to help fill my days with other activities. And it turned out I was distracted easily enough. I still went to the pool almost every day during the summer, but I started playing soccer and doing a whole bunch of other things. Whenever I could, I’d stop to watch the Green Gator practices, imagining myself into the scene, wishing I could take part. The youngest kids on the team were just five and six and seven, but to me they were the big kids in town, and I wanted to be just like them.

  The next summer, my mother signed me up right away. I would ride my bicycle to practice. Of course, my mom would follow in the car, to make sure I got there. She tried to be stealthy, but I always knew I was being tailed! The coaches would bring doughnuts after practice, and we’d sit around and laugh and play. There was a ton of laughing, as I recall. Also, a ton of doughnuts. I’m not sure which I enjoyed more! Nobody wanted to leave the p
ool area. The coaches were really keyed in to us kids, and they had all these games we would play to help us develop our form, our stamina, whatever it was we were working on. My favorite was sharks and minnows, where we’d take turns chasing one another all over the pool.

  Every week or so, there’d be a swim meet, and we’d make a day of it. It felt to us kids like one giant party. We didn’t want it to end. The parents would set up these green-striped tents, and we’d spread out sleeping bags and towels and set up camp. We’d bring playing cards, Frisbees, music. There were enough snacks and home-baked goodies to stock a concession stand. In fact, at most meets there was a huge concession area staffed by the parents. They’d have drinks, snacks, ice cream, you name it. Even barbecued hamburgers and chicken burgers!

  The club had a Big Gator/Little Gator program, so we were each paired with an older kid, who’d bring us Gator goodie bags filled with green bouncy balls, green yo-yos, green hairspray. (Are you sensing a green theme here?) We would dye our hair with this green sparkly stuff, or we’d write all over each other with our green Sharpie pens. Cute little trash-talking quotes like “Eat my bubbles!” It was just the best. I can’t imagine what all that green hair goop did to the pool, or what our “tattoos” looked like after we’d been in the water awhile, but we were just little kids. We didn’t care about any of that stuff.