Samantha Zaets '23 Recruiting Profile

Hello, my name is Samantha Zaets, and I am a swimmer. Swimming has always been an important part of my life. I began my journey in this sport at the age of 5. It was at first only lessons and practicing to get used to the water, until I started competing at the age of 6. About 10 years of hard practices, meets, success, and failures, have brought me to this point. As only a freshman in highschool, I have never felt more commitment to anything other than swimming. Ever since I took my first real stroke in the pool, I have fallen in love with this sport. 

     Swimming has greatly impacted my life. I practice eight times a week, 17.5 hours in total, while balancing my work outside the pool. Swimming is such an underrated sport. Most people would say it’s easy and not entertaining; it’s the complete opposite. If you truly did what I do everyday in my life, you would have a different opinion on swimming. This sport has become my whole life. The things I do everyday revolve around swimming. The best part is that I don’t mind having most of my free time taken up by practice and meets. When I was younger, I was the girl that no one wanted to race because of how fast I was. I was always top 3 at meets in my age group. As I grew older, my ability to be at the top started to go down. I looked at the people gradually passing me until the point where I was lucky to make Metro top 25.  My confidence and love for swimming was dropping. I saw other people living the dream I wanted. The 2018-2019 season, at only 13 years old, my mentality about swimming was poor. I often despised having to go to practice. When I did go to practice, I put the bare minimum into it. I started to not care since it seemed that all my work was for nothing. That year of practicing was a bad decision on my end. When I came back late August, I started to practice again. Once the first meet of the season came around, I realized that I had so much potential that I have been wasting. I realized that I needed to swim for myself. I was always told that I was an above average swimmer, but I never thought much of it. Dropping time in the beginning of the season is rare for me, but that meet turned my life around. It showed my coach and I that I can do great things in my swimming career. My love for swimming was found again. I began to give more effort in practice, which opened my eyes. I trained as hard as I could during the winter until a meet in January 2020 arrived. I had achieved my goal that I set for myself when I was 10: to break a minute in my best event, the 100 Backstroke. For the rest of the meet, I had significant drops in all my events. That meet has allowed me to achieve many of my goals. I gathered more confidence in myself and became passionate about my sport. 

      I have many reasons as to why I’m so passionate about swimming. The main reason is my team. I’m always surrounded by my closest friends who are with me through my swim journey. My teammates are not only friends, but my family. They have pushed me inside and out of the pool. During a hard main set or even warm-up, seeing a smile on my teammates face allows me to push myself to new limits. The joy and happiness my teammates radiate have affected my thought process during practice. The feeling of finishing a set with my closest friends is refreshing. They have made me realize my true potential. Without them as a big supporter, I would never be where I am now. 

       My dreams of swimming have reached a new high as I started high school. I realized what I wanted to do in the future regarding my swimming career. I swim for two teams: club and high school. My club meets and practices are always my priority over high school swimming. However, I want to make sure I participate in my high school team. I make sure I make at least one of the practices each week; even if it means I have a double practice for club.  I have so many new goals that I hope to reach in the near future. However, quarantine has restricted my ability to practice in a pool. Living in New York City doesn’t bring the best weather to swim in my small backyard pool. This setback has really impacted me. It’s been over two months since I’ve been in a pool. This is quite negative on me, but I have looked at the positives. This break has brought the fact of how much swimming means to me to my attention. Not being able to swim allowed me to realize that I’m missing a big part of my life. The hunger to get back into the pool and practice has pushed me to stay in shape. This quarantine is a major setback in achieving my goals, but I am continually looking for the positives during this time.