Wrapping a silicone cap tightly around his hair and readjusting his goggles, sophomore Oleksandr Voloshyn prepares for yet another swim meet.
Breathe, he thinks. It’s okay. I’ve done this hundreds of times by now.
“Take your marks,” a monotone voice projects from an overhead speaker. The swimmers shift swiftly into their positions. A whistle sounds. There’s no room for hesitation now — only so many contestants can qualify for the nationals level meets.
Voloshyn has been swimming ever since he first moved to the United States in third grade. Following a recommendation from a doctor, who suggested it would be great exercise, he decided to try it out. Seven years later, he’s collected medals and team records and is currently competing through Santa Clara Swim Club and Lynbrook’s swim team as a freestyle and breaststroke swimmer. It’s hard to catch him outside the pool: when he’s not practicing or competing, you’ll find Voloshyn as a lifeguard at the Rancho Pool in Cupertino.
As passionate for swimming as he is now, there were times when Voloshyn thought about ditching swimming for another sport. Feeling rapt after a couple rounds of wrestling in middle school, he became torn between the two. Voloshyn loved the simplicity of wrestling, and found “each victory rewarding and every loss justified.” In the end, he stuck to swimming.
“I was really interested in wrestling,” Voloshyn said. “But I remembered that if you never finish the things you start, it’s like you almost never started them, so it’s not really worth it.”
Another reason why Voloshyn kept swimming: his friends. Swimming can get exhausting, but for Voloshyn, all the pain washes away in the face of spending four to five hours a day with them.
“My friend from swimming, Zen, and I keep going against each other every day,” Voloshyn said. “Every time he beats me, I try to beat him. Every time I beat him, he tries to beat me. If he has a tough practice and he doesn’t do well, I’m always there for him, and vice versa. It’s all healthy competition, and he’s been really inspirational.”
With the swim season’s start Voloshyn sets his sights on improving his physicality and pushing to the highest possible level of swimming, NCAA’s Division I, on top of excelling at school. While he hopes to continue swimming in college, that’s not where he sees it ending.
“I really want to continue swimming throughout the rest of my life because swimming is really easy on the joints and it’s a great mental activity,” Voloshyn said. “You have to at least take the first step on that 10,000 step journey. You have to get in the pool for the first time. You have to lift for the first time. After that, you can figure out that it’s not for you. But it’s important that if you really do want to achieve a personal goal, you have to take that first step and you have to keep walking right.”
