Summer Swim Fest

First home meet of the season. Air temp a chill 58 degrees, pool water at 80 and slightly steamy. Adults clutching coffee cups and young children shivering, searching for towels, goggles, swim caps. My kids are the veterans now, the cheerleaders and assistant coaches, and I am the oddball oldtimer, sitting in the shade of a pine tree and working on my laptop.

But we still love the sport, still rally to cheer for the 6 and Unders swimming their first solo lap to the cheers of the crowd. The feeling of relief when the big kids finish a 200 free on minimal training, the delight when the meet runs quickly and finishes ahead of schedule, perhaps in time for lunch and a nap.

Earlier this week I had the privilege and thrill of meeting Jason Lezak, who competed in four Olympics and won eight swimming medals for the United States. Lezak swam possibly the greatest relay leg of all time, anchoring the US 400 Free Relay in the 2008 Games in Beijing (Relay You Tube).  I unabashedly lined up with the kids to get my photo taken (see above) and then my coworkers surprised me with an autographed print of the photo, upon which Lezak had written "Dream Big."

I'm almost to a half-century on this beautiful earth, and those words still have the power to thrill and motivate. Lezak's pep - talk to the swimmers worked for me, too, especially his description of failures and how he learned from them. The older I get, the more I realize that our failures and mistakes are key components of our ultimate success. Would Lezak have stayed in the sport, have been able to come from behind against a world-record-holder, if he had not made big mistakes in previous Olympics?

We can still dream big, we can fall hard, and we can make our falls into the building blocks of our future success. That's a lesson I want to teach my kids, and all of these little swimmers running around on the dewy grass, smelling of suntan lotion and sugar. It's a lesson for a sport that never grows old.