Wyatt Feldman '18 Recruiting Profile

    My swimming career has taught me one thing about myself more than anything else; the only person who could make me successful was myself. The choice to not breathe off the wall from a flip-turn in swim practice translates very well to my choice of whether or not I wanted to continue to work myself to the bone to get the grades I wanted, be it in my high school classes or in my challenging college classes. It all came down to how badly I wanted both things, and what I was willing to put myself through to achieve whatever it was I wanted. My academic life has been filled to the brim with struggles and challenging choices to make, just like my competitive swimming life has. Ultimately, I learned that these challenges were really just obstacles that were testing my determination to succeed with every stride. The question of how badly I want to succeed in both my education as well as my physical excellence was, and still is, a question I struggle with daily. My goals always drove me to fight for the things I wanted, such as building computers piece by piece. Yet, every time I ask myself how much I want to achieve a certain goal, I always return to the same resolution; I will always fight for success in life.

   The summer after my sophomore year, I contracted a shoulder impingement from overuse in the pool, and at the height of my strength, I was forced to take three months off of swimming. The whole year of hard work seemed to have been for naught. Soon after discovering my shoulder had been injured, I managed to sprain my ankle to the second degree, requiring me to be bedridden for the first month of my doctor-mandated leave from swimming. The next two months I had to dedicate myself to rehabilitation with sports medicine doctors and physical therapy, as both my shoulder and my ankle required strengthening. The amount of discouragement and bitterness I felt was overwhelming. It felt as though I had received two injuries as a reward for my hard work in school and athletics. All the progress I had made was essentially forfeit, as I could not attend the Junior Olympic meet for that summer, for which my team had trained all year long. Despite all of this, I returned to swimming. Despite the workouts becoming more difficult as my teammates advanced without me and despite having to regain the ten pounds I had lost while being barely able to move, I still wanted to fight to regain what I had lost. The redemption of myself was something I was used to, as with every new season in swimming came harder workouts and even harder schoolwork. In another three months of regaining five of my ten lost pounds, I attended the Winter Junior Olympics in 2016 and dropped time in nearly all of my primary events.

Staying my own course with great help designed by my physical therapists, coach, and parents, despite being told that the nature of my shoulder injury was swimming excessive amounts, led me to the success I had been seeking. Learning how to balance parts my own body and strengthen integral parts of myself, both emotionally as well as physically, was a major part of my becoming truly stronger. Despite having to overcome many obstacles, I firmly believe that I have become stronger than I would have been by now if I had not gone through them.