Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [42]
Playing on the boys’ team was fantastic. It was fun working out on a tight-knit team, and, like the boys, I had to prove myself every day at workout. My first year of high school, sophomore year, I was a starter, and I lettered that season. But it wasn’t always easy being on the boys’ team. There were a couple of guys who didn’t like having me on the team, and it was certainly surprising to the other high school teams to suddenly play against a girl.
One time, swimming down the pool, I heard a boy yell, “I got this boy”—he stopped in mid-sentence—“girl covered?” Someone on my team passed me the ball, and he was in such shock that I scored off him. His father was in the stands and he angrily shouted, “You let that girl score off you?” It seemed strange that sometimes the parents had more of a problem with me being on the team than the boys did. Eventually, I was accepted, and I became close friends with four of the boys. It was difficult, though; at various times, each of them asked me to go out, but I couldn’t because I felt like I would have been showing favorites and it just wouldn’t have worked, being on an all-boy team. A couple of boys really persisted, and I did want to date them, but I told them it would be better to just be friends. Besides, between schoolwork and workouts, I had very little free time for dating, and by nighttime I was exhausted.
The first time I got hit in the face—on purpose or by mistake, I’m not sure—two of the players on my team saw it and swam after the other player. Fortunately, the referee saw what was happening and broke things up before there was a fight. But the referee had been a national player himself and knew that the other players were letting the player on the other team know that he couldn’t get away with anything. There was a clean way to play the sport and a dirty way, and the dirty way wasn’t acceptable. The referee was able to gain control of the situation before anything happened, and I was pleased that the boys cared about me enough to stand up for me. It made me feel I had been accepted, especially when there were many times in high school that I felt very isolated.
Everyone in high school knew me simply as “the swimmer.” This bothered me because I felt there was so much more to me than just being a swimmer. I was a serious student too, and like everyone else, I wanted to be accepted for who I was. That was probably why my handful of close friends weren’t athletes.
By the end of the school year, I’d decided that I wanted to go back to England and try to break the world record. Expectations for my second attempt were much higher than before. Since Coach Gambril had moved on to Harvard, my brother coached me in the ocean. We trained together off the shores of Long Beach and Seal Beach. It was difficult at times having my brother for my coach, but for the most part, I listened to him—not all the time, though, because I didn’t think he knew more than I did. But I understood that this time I would have to train more intensely, and stronger and faster. My commitment was deeper than before. Missing one workout or just going through the motions would make the difference between breaking the world record and failing.
My mother and I traveled again to England, and we went through the same preparations as the first time. Just as before, waiting for the right day was exasperating, and the pressure was so much greater because the expectations were so much higher. Completing the thirty-mile swim was no longer enough; if I finished the crossing without breaking the world record, I would fail.
With the same crew as the year before, I set out to cross the English Channel. We started from Shakespeare Beach,