Vanya Canak '25 Recruiting Profile

          I looked up to my brother when it came to sports. My brother, Miki Canak, was always an influential person to me and motivated me to do sports from an early age. I started swimming when I was four years old at Lifetime Aquatics. I stayed there for about two or three years until moving to Swift Aquatics. I again stayed there for two to three years until moving to my current team, Nasa Aquatics. 

From Nasa Aquatics, things became harder. I was growing and started understanding what I had to do to beat my personal best. At the time, I was taking lessons for the piano and violin, which to this day I still do. At a point in my life swimming, instruments, and school were difficult to endure all at once. I wasn’t improving my times during my races no matter how hard I tried, I was having difficulties learning specific things like speaking as I had a speech impediment and had trouble talking to teachers, coaches, friends, and my own family members. With the instruments I played and school work, it became a lot more difficult and I was having trouble with reading and writing. I wanted to give up, many times, but every time I wanted to, I thought about what my brother may have said. Almost every time it would be, “If you put in the work now you will enjoy life as much as you like in the future.”

At the beginning of high school, I was nervous about swimming. During the fall season, I was swimming every day. On top of that, I was playing soccer on the freshman team. When the high school season for swimming came around, I was even more nervous. However, I was shocked about the season. It was so much fun and I was getting better by the day. I ended up on varsity for swimming, which was a huge success for me. On top of that, I found my main event, which was the 500 free. From the start of the season, I had a 5:45:45. At the end of the season at sectionals, I managed to get a 5:17: 54. After swim season, water polo came around. I wanted to pick up my brother's interest in water polo. I never played before, but the sport looked so amusing to me I had to give it a try. When water polo started, I ended up on junior varsity. Throughout the season, I was having so much fun and I was learning so much. After our first practice, I knew I wanted to dedicate a lot to the sport. At the end of the season, I had 43 goals. 40 goals for junior varsity, and 3 for varsity because the coach saw my hard work and knew I could do some good work for the team. 

After my freshman year, I was working hard over the summer in swimming and water polo. I woke up at five in the morning for swimming practice from 6-8 am and then rushed to water polo practice from 8:30-10:30 am. I would then later go to water polo practice again or swimming practice in the evening of that same day. By the time the Swimming season for high school came around, I was ready to show what I can do. I was able to drop 15 seconds in the 500 free going a 5:03.45, drop 6 seconds in the 200 free from going a 1:57:35 to a 1:51:21, drop 3 seconds in the 100 free from going a 1:54:49 to a 1:51:00, and dropping a second in the 50 free from 24:34 to 23:21. I was very proud of my season, and I’m hoping to keep improving. When water polo came around I knew I was ready. I was able to work with my team and help them improve the same way they helped me to improve. At the end of the season, I scored 65 goals for my team. I was the top scorer, and at the banquet, we have every year, I was given the MVP award and was in the 2022-23 CSL water polo team. I would soon see on a website named “MaxPreps” that I was 17th in Illinois and 55th in the nation for water polo. 

From a wonderful sophomore year, I hope to keep improving and become the best I can be. I realized that not only did I receive support from my family, but I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish my goals without the help of my team.