The water shimmered like scattered diamonds in the morning light. I was four years old, standing beside a woman I didn't yet realize was a titan of the sport—Dawn Bean, a national champion swimmer, world-renowned coach, and one of the architects of synchronized swimming's rise to Olympic glory. To me, she was just "Coach Dawn."
She knelt by the pool, tossed a handful of pennies into the shallow end, and said with a sly smile, "You can keep whatever you find. The water will teach you how." The coins glinted beneath the surface, sunken treasure daring me to dive.
I stepped into the pool, the water cool and unfamiliar against my skin, raising goose bumps that had nothing to do with the temperature. The chlorine smell was clean and strong, hanging heavy in the morning air. One breath, one step deeper. Then another, the water rising against my legs. My hands swirled through the water like nets, feeling the water move between my fingers as I caught copper dreams that glinted just at my fingertips. I held my breath and dove deeper, slipping past fear into the delight of discovery. That was the first time I remember disappearing completely beneath the surface—and liking it.
Something shifted in me that day, though I wouldn't understand it for years. The water had whispered a secret I was only beginning to hear.
Years flowed like gentle currents, carrying me toward deeper waters. As I grew, so did my relationship with the element that had first called to me through Coach Dawn's pennies. Summers were spent at the University of California, Riverside, with my best friend Ellen. We were fixtures there, known more by our splashes and breath-holds than by our names.
We didn't need a reason to stay in the pool. We belonged to it. We swam laps, did handstands, dove like dolphins, danced like mermaids. We weren't chasing records. We were chasing that same feeling I'd first discovered among the pennies—the joy of disappearing into something larger than ourselves.
The boys—strong swimmers, funny and fearless—raced us, dunked us, teased us. And we gave it back just as fiercely. Our laughter echoed off the pool tiles long after we left for the day. That water was our sanctuary, our playground, our private ocean. Ellen and I had found our element, and in it, we found ourselves.
High school, however, would test everything we'd learned in those carefree summer waters.
When I started high school at John W. North, I joined the swim team without hesitation. My specialty was backstroke in the medley relay. It felt natural—floating on my back, face open to the sky, gliding through the water, imagining I was a mermaid. I wasn't the fastest, but I knew how to feel the water, how to listen to its ancient rhythms.
Ellen and I, inseparable as ever, made a pact. We'd take first-period swimming, the most dreaded time slot on campus. No one else wanted to spend the rest of the school day with soaked hair and wrinkled fingers. It was a beginner's class, and it should have been easy A. The bonus meant we could start our mornings together, just like those endless summer days at UC Riverside.
What we didn't expect was Coach Bonds.
Coach Robert Bonds was a towering figure—literally. Built like a linebacker, known for coaching the high school football team. He carried an air of confidence to command a room just by entering it. His nephew was Barry Bonds, the MLB baseball icon, but at JW North, Coach Robert Bonds had his own legend.
I nudged Ellen that first morning. "Isn't that the football coach?"
She gave me a wide-eyed nod. I caught a flicker of that old shyness in her eyes—the same uncertainty I remembered from our first days at the pool, before the water had taught us who we could become.
We stood awkwardly on the pool deck. There were maybe four of us in the class. Everyone else had opted for dry land.
Coach Bonds paced slowly, arms folded. He watched us swim a few lengths, then stopped. His gaze settled on Ellen—perhaps sensing something in her hesitation, some echo of the timid girl she'd once been.
"Ellen," he said, pointing to the high dive, "go up there. Jump off, flap your arms, and quack like a duck."
We froze. The confident girl who had raced boys and dove like a dolphin suddenly looked like a frightened little girl.
Ellen, painfully shy at this moment, looked at him with horror. "I… I can't."
Without skipping a beat, he turned to me. "Jennifer, show Ellen how it's done. High dive. Flap your arms and quack like a duck!"
There was no room for negotiation in his voice. He looked like Shaq with a whistle. I thought of Coach Dawn's pennies, of summer laughter echoing off pool tiles, of all the times the water had asked me to trust it. I took a deep breath and climbed. The ladder rattled under my bare feet. From the top, the pool looked like a looking glass, reflecting not just my image but every moment that had brought me here.
I closed my eyes and felt the silence gather around me.
"Quack," I whispered, as if the word might carry me safely down.
As I jumped, flapping my arms, I shouted "Quack" and then louder, "Quack, Quack, Quack!"
The splash was deafening in the silence. I surfaced to laughter, whistles, and jeers—some kind, some mocking, but none of it touching the quiet triumph blooming in my chest.
I looked at Ellen. Her eyes were wide, stunned, and maybe… remembering. Remembering the girl who had learned to dance underwater, who had discovered courage in chlorinated depths.
Coach Bonds stepped forward. "Let me tell you something," he said. "In this life, people will laugh at you. That's all just noise. Don't let it define you. You have to laugh at yourself. Be who you are."
He turned back to Ellen. "Now get up on the high dive and Quack. Like a duck."
Ellen hesitated. I could see her wrestling with the moment. Then something inside her seemed to shift. Then she walked slowly to the high dive. The boys' football team had now all gathered outside the chain-link fence, howling with laughter. It felt like we were in jail and they were mocking the inmates.
Ellen climbed. Each rung was a choice, each step a decision to trust what the water had taught her.
She paused at the edge, and I thought: if I could do it, she could do it. For a heartbeat, I saw the little girl she'd once been, the one who used to cling to the pool's edge.
Then she jumped.
"Quack!" she cried out, her voice stronger than I'd ever heard it, just before hitting the water.
The pool erupted in white foam and spray. But this time, Ellen surfaced laughing—really laughing. "I did it!" she gasped between breaths, the words tumbling out with joy. The sound was bright and free, echoing off the tiles like music, like the memory of all our summer days rolled into one perfect note.
Coach Bonds turned on the football players, his voice thundering. "Anyone see something funny here?"
They went dead silent.
"No, sir," came the reply.
"Good," he said. "Because if you do see something funny, you'll be up there next. In full pads. Quacking and flapping like ducks."
They scattered like leaves in the wind.
I went back up the ladder. One more jump. One more quack. Ellen followed, all hesitation gone—just joy now, wide and wild. That goofy little ritual sealed something in us. Not just guts, but the kind of freedom you earn when you stop performing for the people outside the fence. We didn't care if we looked stupid. We weren't doing it for them anyway.
Not long after, I stopped needing to prove anything to anyone. I didn't take lifeguarding, though I was encouraged. My father had told me something that stuck: "Never approach someone drowning. They'll pull you down. Knock them out first, then save them." It was harsh, but it wasn't about violence. It was about clarity. About knowing the line between help and self-preservation.
The water had taught me that too.
Now, years later, I can still feel it—that tug where the world gives way to water, the shimmer of sunken treasures, the splash of a high dive echoing in my bones.
Coach Dawn taught me to dive for joy.
Coach Bonds taught me to quack for courage.
Somewhere in between, I became someone who belonged to the water—and to herself.
The water still calls. And I still answer.
