Chapter 10

If You’re Not First, You’re Last

We celebrate winners. We are disappointed when we lose. Just take a look at professional sports—the Super Bowl, the NBA championships, the World Series are just a few of the events that celebrate the winner and demonize the loser. But what about the losing team? After the game, many of the players and coaches say they’re grateful they made it that far and hope to be back next year, with a different result. In that moment, they played the best they could, and that’s all you can ask. Sometimes it’s not first place that is good enough, but third place.

That is exactly what happened to my daughter in the summer of 2009. Kasey had qualified first for the finals at the World Championship Trials in the hundred-meter breaststroke. The top two places advanced to the worlds in Rome. No one was giving her a chance that evening to make it onto the team. At seventeen and the youngest in the final, her chances were good but not great, as the Olympian Rebecca Soni was also in the race. But they take only two swimmers, so she just had to be good enough that night. And she was. She finished second to Soni, earning a trip to Italy.

Once at the meet, Kasey was just happy to be at the party. She was already practicing gratitude and staying in the moment as she enjoyed being one of the youngest on the team and hanging out with swimming’s elite. In the prelims, she finished eighth—just good enough to make the final. She was in lane eight for the final, and when they all came into the wall at the finish, Rebecca Soni was first, a Russian swimmer was second, and who was third, all the way over in lane eight?

Kasey.

She called me right away, and I heard such joy in her voice as she told me she had never been so happy in her life to get third place. That’s because only the top three, just like at the Olympics, get a medal. Now swimming is an up-and-down sport, and not all of her moments went exactly like in Rome, but it gave her the confidence and the insight into her swimming career that she doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough.

Kasey was one of those athletes who could do any sport and be good at it. She excelled at swimming, along with her sister, Taylor, and so both girls went into year-round swimming at an early age. Now as adults, they ask why I didn’t put them in volleyball, as they are both over six feet tall. Kasey won junior nationals by the time she was fourteen and spent the next three years on the USA National Junior team. She traveled quite a bit and still has friends today that she met during that time. Taylor also excelled but at a little slower pace; she earned a scholarship to UCLA and made the NCAA championships on the relay team. She looks back fondly on her years swimming in Los Angeles. Kasey’s road was a little more up and down, with good years at the NCAAs and not-so-good years at other competitions. In the end, Kasey finished as an eighteen-time All-American and runner-up twice in events she didn’t normally swim in high school. She was on the USA National team but didn’t train intensively for the Olympic trials because of the college season. She retired with no regrets.

She felt she was good enough.

Did she want to be an Olympian? Sure, who wouldn’t? But only two swimmers earn a spot in each event, every four years. Kasey realized that she wasn’t going to base her entire success on one swim meet. I was very proud of her for realizing this because many of her teammates did not and struggled with what they thought they could have achieved during their swimming careers. Swimming taught my daughters so much more than just looking at a black line at the bottom of the pool. It taught them to fail, a lot and early on, and to keep going. It taught them to schedule their time, and to work hard and see results. It taught them how to be good enough.