Ivan Makarenko '20 Recruiting Profile

I make a turn, push off from the side, and count 450 meters completed. Only 7550 left until the end of my training. The water has finally stopped being cold and shivering my body; however, the thoughts of a warm bath do not leave my head. My mind drifts off, thinking about how nice it a break to catch our breath because we all know that practice is only going to get harder. My coach was honored as Coach of the USSR for more than three years in a row. He knows a lot about swimming, but he is more focused on our miles swam than our swimming technique. After more than eight kilometers of exercises in water and an exhausting gym workout, my morning training finally comes to an end.

During eleven years of swimming, I was close to giving up multiple times, whether for swimming in the cold water at 7 A.M or complete exhaustion of my body after workouts by the end of a day. However, my dad and mom were doing everything to keep me on the swimming path. Every morning my dad would cook food for me at 6 A.M. so I could have a good breakfast before training, and he always drove me to the pool. He likes swimming a lot because he also swam in the army when he was young, although my mom never liked nor understood swimming. On the other hand, she was always open to help me with any questions I had from my school. She would even spend hours of her time explaining to me topics that I missed in my school because of the swimming. Thanks to them, I consider the greatest accomplishments in my life to be connected with swimming. Namely, I have achieved the degree of the Sport Master in Ukraine (which equals to the highest level of mastery), and also became three times Ukrainian Champion. I reached these results because of the hard training in swimming and valuable help from my parents. This fact, undoubtedly, demonstrates such a strong feature of my character as purposefulness and the ability to work hard. 

Last year I injured my shoulders and was not able to swim in the school season. The doctors concluded that I had to have an operation after which I would not swim at all. On the one hand, I was in despair of losing this sport from my life; on the other hand, I understood that I could not just give up on the sport. That is why I started my long, challenging rehabilitation, during which I couldn't swim for more than a year and endured severe pain in my shoulders.   During this time, I realized how much swimming has impacted my life. I missed swimming, conversations with my teammates, and most of all competing with all of my friends from all over the country. Those opportunities that I have faced in my life made me stronger and now I am looking forward to gaining more new experience in your college.would be to live a normal teenage life… Waking up every day before school at 8 a.m., eating breakfast in no rush and being free for a day at 3 p.m. Nevertheless, it was not a path that I have chosen and for now, all I need is to follow mine.