Aidan Siemieniec '24 Recruiting Profile

Aidan Siemieniec

What makes a Champion?
It wasn’t possible. They had messed up my time somehow. The giant board read, “100

FLY: Siemieniec, Aidan: 1:03.36” in bright red neon letters. I just stared, mouth gaping open. My mind was unable to process what I was seeing. “1:03” I kept mouthing. I tore my cap and goggles off frantically, exposing my soaked, chlorinated hair. My arm was raised in the air, swinging my cap and goggles around wildly. 1:03. I had dropped nearly seven seconds in the 100 yard butterfly, which I swam only a month ago. I felt as if that day was the best day of my life.

What a curious thing emotions can be. I was the happiest I thought I could be at that singular moment, almost a whole year ago now. The intriguing, curious, and ultimately disheartening fact was that later that day, in the midst of what I believed to be one of my greatest achievements, was a period of one of the most depressing times of my life. As my mother so often puts it, “comparison is the thief of joy;” a quote first spoken by Theodore Roosevelt. In the swim world, they call them “motivational times.” This refers to a tag swimmers carry around on their bags, listing the B, BB, A, AA,AAA, and AAAA times for the swimmer’s age and gender. But motivation wasn’t what I gained when I looked at them. 1:03.36, my PR time for the 100 butterfly, my “proudest achievement;” not even a BB time. For the effort output and complete dedication to the sport of swim I had, plus the fact that I was 17, I should‘ve gotten at least an AA time. Not even a BB time. I still had so far to go to get to where I wanted to be. “How much more of this, why does this always happen,” and “how much longer do I even have now?” were the questions swimming inside my head; no pun intended. Not too much sooner, I received those same thoughts again.

Summer, 2023: group move-ups. I had worked all year with, in my opinion, the best coach I had trained under (a big statement from a constantly moving military kid). And now, I hoped to move up to the next group, especially since Ricky (the coach), was moving to that group as their coach. But I didn’t move up, lost my “best coach”, was now in a group primarily composed of 13-15 year olds, and essentially, had to start over- again. What was the point of all this disappointment and struggle? All this work with no payoff or improvement that counted? Well, I tried to figure that out, a lot.

After looking over these events and several more, over and over again, there is one thing I found constant. And no, it’s not the continuous failure and short-comings I kept having. But it kind of is. It’s the fact that I keep failing, the fact that I’m still here to fail. In other words, the fact that I won’t give up. It’s the perseverance I maintain. That even when I fail and fall short over, and over, and over again, I won’t quit. While I have seemingly gained very little on the outside, I have gained one of the most powerful traits on the inside- perseverance. So even when I fall, and am left behind, and don’t make the cut, and am “not good enough” and all effort seems worthless, I can count on one thing to go right. I can always know that no matter how hard I’m hit, I will always get back up. Now, in my last year of high school, even when time is my greatest enemy, I will not give up. I will persevere. To me, that is what really makes a champion.

James 1:12