Personal Statement
I am a musician and a swimmer. In swimming I specialise in all 3 fly events, but my best are the 100 and 50 fly. I am deeply emotionally invested in what I do. I care a lot about what I do and put 150% into my training and my coach will certainly attest to that.
Some of my accolades in swimming also include the captainship of my school swim team on a national level in my final year of studies. I had a good team surrounding me, but we had no business being in the finals, as only 3 of the 4 members of the squad were still active swimmers (The 4th member of the squad had ceased club swimming). Furthermore, being captain of the squad I had the added pressure of having to post the fastest times in both heats and finals against some serious competition, which I did. I am mentally strong, and I do have a “clutch gene”, and enjoy the pressure of competition, and supporting my teammates throughout the events ensuring that thay are calm and prepared to race fast. I am very altruistic, and I care deeply about those around me, and this for me is my most important quality. To supplement my swimming training I am also a member of a local running club, and balance the training in season and use it more in off-season to avoid any drop-off in aerobic capacity
Despite suffering a bad bout of COVID early in the season, I won bronze in the 100 fly at the Ulster (Regional/provincial) Short Course Championships, and Silver in the 200 fly Irish national long course championships both in 2022.
I also enjoy playing music. I have earned trinity grade 8 in both rock guitar and piano. My greatest musical achievement is performing “Dance of the knights” by Prokofiev and “Howl’s moving castle theme” on the piano in the college theatre in front of a capacity crowd. These are some pretty complex and epic pieces of music, and I hope you agree!
Links to recordings of these pieces which I have posted on Instagram.
You will see also on the same Instagram page some of my covers on guitar.
I am currently studying a HND (Higher National Diploma) in musical performance, and as mentioned above I have experience of playing solo piano pieces in front of a live audience – which was a wonderful experience. I also speak Spanish to a level, where I can easily hold conversations with people, however there are some grammatical errors in my speech that I still need to iron out. I look forward to spending more time in Spanish speaking countries in the next few years to work on this more and more. I would be really excited to join a US university and absorb the culture and environment, as I have travelled extensively in Europe and this would only serve to broaden my experience, thinking and worldliness. I also think I could bring a lot of benefits to the University, from my background in Europe , my leadership and altruism would really help in sports and musical ensemble settings.
