BECOMING RESILIENT
Keeping The Dream Alive This year, a lot of plans have been upended and lives have been put on hold. For some of Ivanhoe Girls’ keenest athletes, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed their lives in ways unimaginable a year ago. 1
Emilia Year 10 What were your plans for 2020? I’ve been swimming competitively for six years. This year would have been my third year on the National Team, representing Victoria. This year I qualified for three events – the 100m and 200m Backstroke, and the 200m Individual Medley. I was aiming to qualify for the Olympic trials, which were in June. It was about three weeks out from Nationals when our coach suddenly told us it was cancelled. We all kind of looked around at each other and thought what are we going to do now? We’d been training for a whole year and we were probably in the best condition of our lives. After that, training was kind of pointless, we didn’t really know what to aim for, or what we were doing. It was really hard for all of us. How did you adjust to lockdown? During the first wave we were at home for 10 weeks. After that we were able to get into the water for about a month, and we were
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just getting back into hard training when we went into lockdown again. The second time has been much harder. You can feel your swimming fitness disappearing. Every competition this year and next year has a big question mark on it so we don’t really have anything to aim for. That’s been one of the really hard things. You just have to try and overcome that and try and think ahead. Our coach said something to us that resonated for me, “Discipline and motivation are two different things”. When you have discipline, everyday you just keep going. Eventually when we get out of all of this, the motivation will come back. How did you come to terms with the disappointment? It has taken a little while. I can’t control what the whole of Victoria is doing. I can’t control what stage of restrictions we are in. I can’t control the numbers. I can’t control anything except for myself. Knowing that I’m in control of my own body and I'm in control of the exercise I do, and my fitness has made me feel a little bit more grounded.
How have you adapted? Before, it was easy to stay fit because we were swimming seven days a week. Now I’ve been exercising every day. I normally train two or three runs in a week, and I'm lucky enough to have my own gym equipment in the garage. Our coach is really in touch with us. He’s been sending out motivational videos and recipes and just trying to keep the squad and everyone together and letting us know that we are all in it together. Everyone is trying to support each other and I think it's definitely helping. It would be so much harder if you were on your own. What have you learnt most about yourself? I still have goals and I still really want to reach them - I’ve just had to change it up a little bit. I never really realised how strong I was until I was tested. But now it's surprising. I’ll take the mental skills that I’ve learnt into the future with me. This time has been a really good test of everyone’s resilience, not just in sport but in life in general.
