Swimming to Antarctica Read Free Page B

with palm trees. A place where all the cities ran together and all the houses looked alike. I felt boxed in, lonely, isolated, and I just wanted to go home. But that wasn’t possible. Our house in New Hampshire had been sold. My parents told us that we would have to buy a new one if we returned. I cried through the night. Nothing they did could console me.
    A couple of days later, my brother and sisters and I met with Mr. Gambril. He was a bear of a man, five foot ten, a former football player with a thick neck, a crew cut, and dark brown eyes. I liked him. He was kind and had a quick smile and an instant way of making us feel welcome. He started the team on their warm-up set and pulled us to the side and told us what he expected of us. We had to be at the pool in time for each workout. If we were late we wouldn’t be allowed to get into the water. We would work out for two hours a day to start with, and if we did well we could eventually do two workouts a day, for a total of four hours. He told us he expected us to work hard, but also to have fun. He didn’t want us on the team if we didn’t want to be there. Then he explained what we could expect of him. He would coach us for the workouts and prepare us for the swim meets, and he would keep track of our progress during both. He also expected us to keep track of our times during workouts and get our results from swim meets. He told us he would always be available to answer our questions. “Do you understand all of this?” he asked.
    We nodded. I glanced at Laura, ten years old; Ruth, seven; and David, who was fourteen. They were as wide-eyed as I was. We knew we were now in an entirely different league. This was serious. And if we didn’t follow these rules, we wouldn’t make the team.
    We walked along the pool’s edge and stopped at each lane so Mr. Gambril could introduce the team members. Squatting down to theirlevel, he told us kids’ names, joked with them, teased them a little without using sarcasm, and told us funny anecdotes or habits about some of the kids, making them laugh. It was obvious that they loved and respected him.
    Mr. Gambril explained that lane assignments were designated according to a swimmer’s speed, race distance, stroke preference, and age. Girls and boys trained together. The first two lanes were for the slowest swimmers. This would be where we started working out; as we improved, we would be moved to the faster lanes. Lanes three and four were for the fast age-group swimmers, five and six were for the Olympic sprinters, and seven and eight were for the Olympic distance swimmers. That was where I wanted to be, in lane eight.
    “Do you have any questions?” he asked, willing to answer anything.
    Mustering my courage, I said, “Mr. Gambril, how old do you have to be to swim in the Olympic distance lanes?”
    There was a flash of recognition in his eyes. “Please call me Coach,” he said. “You don’t need to be formal here. You can be any age to swim in lane eight, as long as you are able to do the workout at the pace of the swimmers in that lane.” He knew that the difference in speed between the swimmers in lane eight and mine was like the distance between the moon and Neptune, an enormous difference; but Coach Gambril was the master of inspiring dreams. He made a long, high-pitched whistle through his teeth to get the swimmers’ attention. They were in the middle of a kicking set. “Hans, Gunnar, come on over here. I want to introduce you to the Cox family.”
    As they kicked toward the wall, Coach Gambril told us about their amazing background: “Hans is from Germany, and Gunnar is from Sweden. They are on my team at Cal State Long Beach. Both are also training for spots on their Olympic teams. If they keep working hard, they have a great chance. Right now Hans Fassnacht is the fastest man in world in the mile and the fifteen-hundred-meter freestyle, and he has a very good chance of winning the gold medal for Germany at the