The Joy of Alysa Liu

"My family is out there. My friends are out there. I had to put on a show for them. And when I see other people smiling, because I see them in the audience, I have to smile too, you know?" — Alysa Liu, 2026  Olympic Gold Medalist, Women's Singles Figure Skating

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God bless Alysa Liu for boosting the entire country with a shot of her infectious joy. Watching her gold ponytail spin—one more layer of brilliance—above her shiny, tasseled skate dress, taking in her wide smile as she bedazzled the Olympic audience, I hid tears from my husband. As an athlete who coaches athletes just a few years younger than Liu, I recognize that pure happiness that comes from doing what you love without expectation or attachment to outcome—such a rare and precious commodity.

Every Olympics fan now knows Liu took two years off from skating before rekindling her love affair with the sport. She is an artist, and her routines constitute incomparable art - shared with millions. On the Olympic ice during Thursday's free skate, she never stopped smiling—even during warmup, those tense fifteen minutes where competitive skaters swirl around each other trying to avoid collisions and falls. Her routine personified a freedom, a joy, that drew the audience to its feet in explosive appreciation at the end of her four-minute dance with destiny.

Liu called herself "over the moon, the luckiest girl ever" in her post-competition interview. She shared gratitude with the Japanese skaters who took second and third place, holding seventeen-year-old bronze medalist Ami Nakai after the young skater realized her medal position and burst into tears. Their heart-shaped arms framing beaming faces blessed me in the aftermath—another image to carry forward.

Sisterhood on the podium resonated this week as the high school girls I help coach won their sixth consecutive State title in swimming. Two sets of twin sisters stood on the podium together, along with many other teammates sharing bright smiles with friends and families. Despite nerves, every girl handled business while also offering big hugs, waves, and dance moves to athletes on deck and spectators in the stands. Our head coach notes that the girls swim faster when they're having fun—and I agree wholeheartedly. Our practices get interrupted by social kicks, sing-alongs, coordinated clapping, the freeze challenge —anything we can do to weave competition with companionship.

You can see a mix of emotions on any athlete's face at the end of a race or performance: relief at completing the journey, knowing hard work paid off; sheer exhaustion; disappointment at results that fell short of expectations; frustration at complications; shock and awe at outcomes exceeding wildest dreams. All valid. Every athlete's journey winds over different terrain, carries different motivation, seeks different fulfillment. How lovely this week to witness two stories that ended in joy—proof that sometimes the rainbow's end delivers exactly what it promised.

State Championship Finals

 The Colorado 5A (largest schools) State Championship finals are set for this evening and the entire swim season ends with three hours of racing on a Friday night. The wonderful JV squad that I coached swam their final races last weekend at a successful league championship meet, so I wouldn't say that the success of their season - or my season - rests on tonight's results, but our team record and our team banner waits anxiously for record-setting swims starting at 5pm today.

Swimming is a ridiculous tough sport; athletes follow the black line on the bottom of the pool for hours a day, minds busy either focusing on what they're doing (the hope) or spinning wildly through their their to-do list, and their recent social interactions (top of mind for HS swimmers). We swim until our arms are too tired to lift the fork at dinner, until our skin bleaches and peels, until exhaustion becomes familiar.

Coaches write their best, most focused workouts each day, including strength and resistance training, stretching, sprinting, distance, stroke and drill work. We preach technique until we're blue in the face, only to be interrupted by young faces arguing over the playlist emanating from our phones. SZA, Disney, Taylor, etc. seem far more important than the correct catch and pull of the stroke - at least until these final championship weekend when the fast tech suits come on and young faces transformed by nerves.

On deck we agonize over taper, or "resting" workouts, planning the descent in yards for weeks, urging kids to eat enough, sleep enough to rebuild muscle tissue and throw off the overwhelm so typical in high school. For some swimmers (usually upperclasswomen) the taper hits perfectly and time drops away as a result, leading to joyful celebrations by coaches and shocked delight on the face of the swimmer.

For other swimmers, the taper doesn't work or their nerves take over. Arms and shoulders tight with nerves can't move as quickly, and the swim doesn't look fluid or strong but frenetic. Coaches agonize over those swims, wondering if the athlete needed a few more days of rest, a day off, another pep talk. On a weekend when we had 29 best times and multiple drops of many seconds, all I could think about was the one swimmer who had a rough meet. "What could I have done differently?" was a refrain for days after that.

So the season ends tonight and we will have tears of joy, tears of sorrow, looks of delight and looks of disappointment. For all of the varsity athletes, practice will resume again on Monday for their club teams but for the coaches, a well-deserved 8-month break will begin, and we will ruminate repeatedly on what worked, who swam well and how to help those who didn't.

Apologies

 Apologies for the void in production of blog entries, I am drowning in all things high school swimming! (Pun absolutely intended). My voice went missing a week ago, my sleep schedule is off and my dreams haunted by the question of which girls need more taper (rest). Our team has four meets in one week and the meet lineups are driving us to distraction. Perhaps on Sunday I can rest for a half-day, before composing the final weekly email to parents and the last meet lineup. That's right, our season is close to the finish line, and perhaps soon I can wrestle with words again, find creativity in my brain instead of swim sets and sendoffs. My husband and son will be glad to find dinner on the table and their wife/mother more emotionally stable. It's coming, all, I promise!

State Champions and the Joy of Victory

Our girls won the 5A (large school) State Championship swim and dive meet in record-breaking fashion, scoring 502 points in the first 500+ team effort ever. They also set a state record in the 200 free relay, racing jaw-dropping splits that left us coaches speechless. I hit the watch on our last swimmer and could only turn to the other coaches to show them, mouth agape. Our late-night (until 2 am) coaching strategy meeting and the emotional outpouring we saw from our swimmers and divers kept us teetering from calm and purposeful (in front of the team) to hyped-up, stressed out, and tearful in our small huddle on the side of the pool. 

Impossible to watch the uplifted faces of our athletes when they realized their victory and not get choked up -- the girls were leaping into the air, embracing, taking photos, and weeping by turns. I hugged three normally stoic swimmers as they staggered around the deck, crying into their chlorinated, wrinkly hands. Teenagers have been through hell the past two years, and I can only imagine the release they felt at swimming a full State meet for the first time since the pandemic started, able to see friends, teammates and family and share their joy with one other. 

I mean, the pandemic's been hell on everyone, but the young people have had to shoulder heavy loads that are disproportionate to their short experience and limited perspectives. Now, only ten days after our glorious win, the teenagers have to face alarming headlines about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Putin's mad fallacy that going to DEFCON status will advance anything positive.

For two glorious days we could exist in a bubble of sport, a "good" bubble that we chose, and watch the girls work hard and play hard in the most uplifting way. True, I came down to earth and back to my other four jobs with a jolt, wading through pages of emails and creating multi-page to-do lists of tasks that were forgotten in the weeks leading up to State, but it was absolutely worth it. Even though I'm now obsessively busy with my "replacement" work, I can't help but wonder what our journey will look like next year.

The End of an Era

At some point during William's state championship swim meet I noticed the ring finger on my right hand had swelled and bruised purple from clapping against my platinum band. I couldn't clap or cheer by the last relay - my voice gave out in the first half of the meet - so I clutched at my torn blue fan, tears welling as I mutely watched my son swim his last high school race. They took third, beating their seed time by over five seconds and jumping up three places. Their first relay had kicked things off with a bang, winning and setting a new state record by over two seconds. 

The crowd was electric, packed sweaty knee to sweaty knee, screaming itself hoarse for the respective high schools. Barred from a 2020 season by COVID, forbidden even to attend dual meets in the 2021 season D events, parents, families and friends were finally set free to cheer on our boys. The nerves and intensity rose to a fever pitch as the swimming heavyweights duked it out in the pool.

More state records fell: the 50 free (to an Olympic Trials competitor), the 200 free relay (William's teammates), the 400 free relay (neighboring high school with yet another Olympic Trials swimmer on board). William came away with four podium swims (podium in this case being top ten places): first in the medley relay, where he swam the butterfly leg; seventh in the 100 fly, in which he broke 50 seconds for the first time; fifth in the 100 backstroke, and third in the 400 free relay. Both of his relays are automatic high school All-American times.

William overcame overtraining syndrome, autoimmune issues, a late start to the sport (he was 14) and a pandemic to crush his best times and help lead his team to a second (non-consecutive) state championship title. When the parents could only speak in whispers or whistle, at the end of the night, the boys and their coaches all jumped in the pool, holding the trophy aloft and lifting fists and voices to the high rooftop. 

Watching Aden and William in their high school swim meets both lifted and filled me. Loving the athletes and the sport, feeling the partisan passion for their school, teammates and friends, I'll never be able to recapture the particular pleasure-pain of those swim seasons. Two or three days after State I crashed back to earth - no more videos to watch and post to friends and family, no more news articles to scan. The slight relief I felt at William being done, free of responsibility and care, fell flat under the sorrow of my loss. 

Aden and William might move forward to swim club together at CU, and I can cheer Daniel on in cross-country and track, but I will miss the high school pools, the uncomfortable bleachers where I perched with friends and neighbors, straining to catch every stroke, eyes flashing to the scoreboard for results, raising my fist in triumph when the kids looked to me with a smile. I'll miss timing behind the blocks and running the scoreboard in the "crow's nest," the team cheers, and the thunderous roaring of the crowd when the home team wins.