For senior Kayla Chapman, her biggest cheerleaders have always been her parents.
Her mom, who swam in high school, was the one who initially enrolled Chapman in swimming lessons at a young age, wanting her to be able to safely accompany her dad on fishing trips. From there, whether it was driving Chapman to practices after competitive swimming began at age six or accompanying her on college visits to take notes, her parents have been with her every step of the way.
“They’re the ones who, obviously, got me into it … They’re the ones who took me to my practices and all that. They’re the ones who are always like ‘I know you don’t want to, but hey, you’re going to practice,’” she said. “I definitely would not be where I am without [them].”
Now, following a two-year journey of recruitment, Chapman has committed to continuing her love of swimming at Macalester University. In doing so, she joins The Falconer’s Next Level Seniors, a series which showcases students who are going to compete in athletics at the collegiate level.
Throughout the process of looking at schools, one thing was always clear for Chapman: she wanted to keep swimming.
“My dad throughout this time was like … ‘say you get into, like, Stanford or Harvard, but you can’t swim on the team. Would you still not want to go?’” she said. “And I was like, ‘No, I’m not going to go if I can’t swim on the team.’”
Her decision to attend Macalester and join their Division III swim program wasn’t one that she decided on overnight, though.
After visiting nine colleges with her mom in the Northeast and Midwest, she stayed overnight at three of them, going to practices, visiting classes with swimmers, and gaining a deeper understanding of their team’s community and dynamic. After that, Chapman explained, she was deeply split between Vassar College and Macalester.
“It literally came down to the most nuanced things: travel time, do your parents want to travel that much, what’s the food like around there,” she said.
From there, she and her family chose Macalester.
Knowing she’s been afforded the opportunity to keep pursuing the sport that’s always been a pivotal part of her life has helped Chapman stay consistent and committed throughout her senior season, she explained, especially during the two injuries she experienced.
Her first one occurred the weekend after Thanksgiving, when she dislocated a rib.
“It got to the point where, like, if I was just sitting up straight, I could not rotate my torso at all without pain,” she said.
Her rib was readjusted at the end of December, but almost a month later, during the first few weeks of January, it became dislodged a second time.
That had a big impact on Chapman’s motivation, she explained, especially since her latter injury occurred in the peak of the high school swim season, leaving her only a few weeks to train for championships.
“My entire senior season has been kind of screwed up,” she said. “The first few three meets of high school … I just couldn’t go to. Like I went to them, and I was standing on the sidelines, but I couldn’t swim.”
What was hardest for her throughout that, Chapman said, was the disconnection it created, both from the goals she had hoped to accomplish in her last year competing for La Salle and from a routine which had always been a core part of her life. After being on track to break several La Salle high school records, the fact that she couldn’t train or compete meant that “those all went out the window.”
“There have been a lot of times this year I’m like, ‘I don’t want to go to practice. There’s no point in me going to practice and all this stuff,’” she said. “My dad was really helpful there. He was like, ‘you gotta go. You gotta go. You gotta go. You have to do well, you can’t drop off.’”
Staying consistent has been one of the struggles Chapman has faced throughout her career as a swimmer, she explained, particularly due to the repetitive and individual nature of her sport.
“When you’re younger, you’re constantly growing. You don’t even have to practice that much to get better. And so you’re just always dropping time, always dropping time, always dropping time,” she said. “Eventually, as you start to hit puberty and get older, you kind of reach this plateau moment.”
That plateau — when she went from dropping time at meets after three practices to not improving on her best races for years — sometimes caused her to fall into a discouraging mindset, Chapman said. Driven by her competitive nature and desire to succeed, she found herself asking: what am I doing wrong? Why am I not improving?
“I love to win, and then all of a sudden I can’t get better,” she said. “It’s like, okay, well, what’s the point?”
Something that’s helped her to stay focused is an understanding of how swimming positively impacts her on a day to day basis.
While a large part of her love for swimming stems from her enjoyment of it, it also plays an important role in her mental health and wellbeing, Chapman said. In some ways, it can serve as a balance or outlet from other stressors — if she has a rough day at school, for example, swim practices offer an opportunity to reset and focus on herself.
“It keeps me sane, almost,” she said.
During the pandemic, when going to swim practices became very difficult, this was illustrated clearly for her and her parents.
“All of a sudden, this thing that was such a constant in my life was just gone,” Chapman said, explaining that before practices started up again, “I literally became depressed. I shut myself in my room. I didn’t want to do anything.”
Recognizing the relationship between how she’s doing and how much she’s swimming has helped her stay motivated.
“My parents were like, ‘okay, did you see that change? Did you see how that’s affected you?’” she said. “And I did … that keeps me going.”
For Chapman, the huge role swimming has played in her life has been a blessing, and one she is excited to continue having as she grows and experiences college.
“When you find something you love and you do it for a long time, it becomes a part of who you are,” Chapman said. “That’s never going to go away, so you might as well embrace it.”
