matthew lane '20 Recruiting Profile

My parents, specifically my mother, my grandfather and grandmother, my coaches, my friends and many famous professional swimmers have made an unbelievable impact on my swimming journey.  With my parents encouragement, love and commitment to my personal excellence, my coaches determination, my friends motivation and competition and countless popular swimmers being untouchable role models and along with my personal dedication, swimming has become a lifestyle to me.  Swimming became an interest to me when I was 8 years old and I decided to go through the little summer swim program at my local swim club.  Even though I had never swam before the coaches thought I was very good and when I got offered the chance to actually swim on the team, I fell in love with the sport.  Due to the competitive nature of swimming, I feel I have discovered an ambitious side of me that I've never experienced before and I really love it.  I feel that I've matured not only as a racer, but as a person.  Even though swim is a huge lifestyle to me, academics is still extremely important to me.  For high school and college, my goal is to stay at or above a 3.5 grade point average and hopefully be able to achieve an academic scholarship to a good college.  At first, swimming was a breeze to me and dropping time and changing technique was effortless.  Now and for a while, I usually take much of the season to drop a lot of time.  Sometimes I feel (even though I know it is my nature) I may be over analyzing my technique and it get's a bit discouraging and frustrating, especially when you are trying to drop time.  As I have become more mature though, I know now it takes a lot of hard work and determination to get better to achieve the results I desire, which so far I have been able to do.  In my, my friends, my coaches and my parents opinion, I am acquiring good leadership skills in and out of the water.  I'm kind, I have a very nice yet funny personality and it's enjoyable being a friend to me.