To be honest, I really haven't had a ton to report on. I took my family and my parents to Atlanta a couple of weeks ago. I was sitting on the couch on Wednesday trying to figure out what to do that weekend, and 24 hours later, the plans were set. One of the benefits to working for an airline is spur of the moment trips.
Some know that I lived in Atlanta from 1995-2003, and went to undergrad there. It's a town I'm very fond of for a number of reasons, so it was great to go back and visit.
We were shocked at how much had changed in the past 4 years. Tons of development in town. Urban revitalization at its finest I'd say. Certainly a real-estate developer/investor's dream.
On Sat morning, we headed over to Emory U., my Alma matter, to walk around campus. Like the rest of Atlanta, Emory has been building, renovating, and expanding at a rapid rate. It looks great. We stopped by the P.E. Center, which had a third floor added to the top of it over the last couple of years to check out a Varsity men's soccer game (Emory was crushing Carnegie Mellon U.) then peeked in on the pool and saw the 4 or 5 guys who didn't travel with the team to Savannah, GA for a swim meet that day finish up their morning workout.I graduated in 1999, and every men's team record has since been re-written since I left. The oldest record on the books was Sebastian Popa's 200 Butterfly record set in 2002, which I witnessed him set. Other than that, they were all 6 mos to 2 years old.
The team went through a drastic change while I was a student. When I was recruited to swim there, it was a sleepy team that didn't field a full squad and had to fight it out for 3rd and 4th place (out of 8 teams) in our conference.
By my Junior year, we had begun transforming into a more "proper" team training more like I did in High School (basically more often, smarter, and harder) and results followed.
No one will admit this, but Emory is now a top NCAA swim program due to the efforts of former assistant Coach Jessica Berkowitz. She was hired during my sophomore year and overhauled the attitude, recruiting, and training philosophy of the team taking us from a team with one top 10 finish at the National Championships ever, to a consistent top 5 finisher and eventual runner-up National Champion (the women's team won a national championships in '06). Without her overhaul, we wouldn't have landed the recruits we began to land, and the head coach we eventually hired who was able to take us over the top.
During my senior year, the men's team won our conference championships for the first time ever bringing down the Johns Hopkins dynasty. That year, we ended up 6th at the National Championships, and we've been top 3 nearly every year since.
Let me be perfectly clear, I feel I had more to do with the success out of the pool than in it. I was a good High School swimmer, but never bettered my best times in my best events, the 100 and 200 backstroke while in college. My PR's were set when I was 17 years old. Luckily, I was good enough as a high schooler to be able to continue contributing and scoring as a collegiate swimmer. We had some amazing athletes who were the reason for the team's success, but I like to believe that as a captain that year along with my co-captain, that we were able to foster an environment that set us up to succeed, primarily by helping to change the attitude of the team from passive and self deprecating to aggressive and confident.
Visiting the pool that morning brought back fond memories for sure. That was the first place I ever saw my wife, and were our friendship began. My closest friends from undergrad were teammates. When I looked down from the bleachers into the water, it was strange. How many hours did I spend in that water? How many miles have I covered in that little 50 meter x 25 yard space? How much suffering did I put myself through in that space? How much was learned in that space? In a way, it was like digging up a time capsule and revisiting old memories.
So the trip to Atlanta was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to visit again.
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