> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://larrysalibra.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Camaraderie is the secret to success: a swimming lesson for life
- URL: https://larrysalibra.com/camaraderie-is-the-secret-to-success-a-swimming-lesson-for-life/
- Published: 2026-10-03T15:59:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-03T17:37:00.000Z
- Author: Larry Salibra
- Tags: success, swimming, day-86, daily

I was chatting with a high school swim team friend this evening about swimming and reminiscing about our experience swimming competitively as children. Before high school, in late elementary school, actually, I started swimming competitively on a private club team. Our club was one of the top, if not the top in the area. During my time swimming for that club, we had a world champion and a couple Olympic medalists. In addition to that, a number of swimmers on our team were state champions and ranked top 16 in the nation.

The thing was, almost all of the highest-performing people on our team were girls. How was it that our team was able to produce so many top performing girls but very few top performing boys? I can't say for sure, but I think the answer lies in friendship and competition.

The high-performing girls, on our team (of which there were many) were generally very close friends. Swim practice to them was not just a chore to be completed but a social activity that was fun and an opportunity for them to hang out with their friends. They pushed each other to show up and pushed each other to practice harder. They also all generally started swimming competitively when they were very young, often in early elementary school. They grew up and trained together every day often for 3, 4 or 5 hours a day, year-round for a large part of their childhood.

I never personally found that kind of camaraderie on my club team. And I didn't really observe it among any of the boys on my club team in my age group. In hindsight, I think the lack of camaraderie frequently made going to swim practice a bit of a drag.

But that changed in high school when I joined our school swim team and found a group of boys with whom I became good friends. We trained hard and pushed each other to always show up and make improvements. Our team did well over the four years of high school swimming and I personally improved a lot and ended up Champion of the [Greater Cleveland Conference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater%5FCleveland%5FConference?ref=larrysalibra.com) in at least one of my events.

I made a comment to my friend that I wished I'd met him and started swimming with him and some of the other guys on our high school team years earlier in elementary school. I suspect we could have replicated that self re-enforcing, positive training environment that the girls on my club team created and led them to national and international success. There are of course innate physical limitations in sports like swimming and I was never going to be as tall as 1.83 meter [Mark Spitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark%5FSpitz?ref=larrysalibra.com) or 1.93 meter [Michael Phelps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael%5FPhelps?ref=larrysalibra.com) that would have put a cap on how far we could go. But we would have had more fun training, earlier in life and probably would have trained harder and done better.

Unfortunately, when we were 6 or 7 years old we didn't really have much say in who our peer group was or what sports we were doing. But we do as adults. Surrounding ourselves with the right people in life can be the difference between hard work being hard and the outcome mediocre and hard work being fun and the outcome life-changing.