It was 6:40pm at the Ames High pool. After a relatively hard practice, kids were given a choice: 200 easy, just to cool down and go home, or 1000 yards Butterfly. His option, an easy one: become legendary! Matt Boylan got up on the blocks, dove in, and swam 40 lengths of the pool, nonstop, all in Butterfly!
The feat deserves recognition. In a season where we are trying to teach kids on the importance of being mentally tough, of taking down challenges, Matt gave the best lecture. Why did he do it? Was it a punishment? No, he simply knew he could, and so he did. That’s how great feats are achieved. There was no doubt in his mind; he just knew he was capable of doing it. There was no price or punishment; he just wanted to do it. Period. As simple as that, and yet by doing so he gets all the recognition he wasn’t expecting. Several senior and age-group swimmers were simply stunned by his resolution, and towards the end he got all the moral support we could hope for.
We were lucky to have a camera on hand, so here’s a snippet of what the last laps looked like. The raw footage was so amazing we felt like we shouldn’t edit it at all:
Congrats, Matt!
That was awesome to see!
ReplyDelete