Swim Brief Blogger Contest: Lisa Stephens

Earlier this week, we announced a contest to replace Gu...I mean add another blogger to the Swim Brief mix. Applications have been pouring in. We've decided to give some of these bloggers a try at writing for the site as a "tryout". This is the first blog we received, from Lisa Stephens:

Stories From the Stands:  A Fan's Perspective

It's not easy being a swim fan.  Most of the world concerns themselves with athletes chasing balls.  They talk about people like Lebron James, Albert Pujols and Rory Mcllroy. You watch Sports Center nightly and while it's productive and it gets the job done there's hardly ever any swimming so it doesn't have the full effect that you had been hoping for.  Kind of like your 'first time.'  (BTW, if you're a man you may not understand this reference but if you're a woman--c'mon--give me a high five.) You walk into a sports bar and there's 5,658 tv's and not ONE of them is showing the Grand Prix.  You have a stash of ready-to-go witty retorts to people's frequent ignorant comments like, "swimming's boring,"  "I thought that people only did that for the Olympics" and "dude,  that's so gay."

You spend an inordinate amount of time on your computer reading blogs, watching videos, chatting with online friends with similar concerns that wake them up in the middle of the night in cold sweats too ("is -insert name- training hard enough?"....was -insert name-just a suit swimmer?")  and your family and friends worry because they think you're a pedophile until they realize what you're doing online and then they worry a just a teeny, tiny bit less.

You are passionate.  You have your shirt that says "Swimming is the ONLY sport:  Everything else is just a game" and you believe it with every fiber of your being.  You will talk to anyone around you who is semi-conscious about swimming and if they're brain stem isn't functioning you still say to them, "when you're feeling better remind me to tell you about those splits...it was SICK."   It's like a job to disseminate your passion and knowledge.  You're like a community organizer, cheerleader and Julian Assange all rolled into one.

You spend more money than you should to go to meets.  The smell of chlorine turns you on.  It doesn't even matter that they don't serve beer because  the local swim team is selling Tootsie Rolls and room temperature water and you care more about the little kids in their stretched-out Speedos than the cold beer  (there are exceptions, I know, and we can discuss those.)  You find the athletes are approachable and funny (and if they're not it might be because they're on their way to swim a 400IM and it just might not be a good time)* and when Phelps gets on the block and flaps his arms the sound reverberates through the aquatic center and straight through you to your soul.  

*swim fan etiquette as a future blog 

In my humble opinion, the swim fan hasn't got the props they deserve yet.  I may be biased, but I think we're fascinating and we're all smokin' hot.  Some other swim-fan topics worth writing about may include, "Ryan Lochte's attractiveness:  An anthropological study,"  "What is Universal Sports and who do I have to sleep with to get my cable/satellite provider to offer it?" and "I've been in these stands for 3 days sitting on 4 USA Swimming cushions and my ass still hurts."  Yes, it's a story whose time has come.  Let it be heard.