Lucio Bollettieri ’22 has been a member of the Breck-Blake boys swim team, the Bearstangs, since seventh grade. After going through a few club teams, he is now part of the Hurricane swim team in Hopkins and swims for the Bearstangs during the high school season.
Despite the notion that swimming may feel isolating at times, Bollettieri shares, ìI really like the team. Swimming isn’t always seen as a team sport, it’s a lot of individual events, but on both of the teams that I’m on, just the group and the friends on the team are really important to me. And also just within the sport itself, there’s a lot of visual progress, you can very easily see if you’re improving because you’re just losing time. So you can see that you’re improving, and I think that helps get me motivated.
To keep himself motivated, Bollettieri set goals for himself to reach during his swimming career. Currently, he aims to make a nationals relay for the nationals meet in Orlando in the upcoming spring. He has qualified for a meet in Wisconsin as well, so he hopes to perform well there and win the nationals cup.
When asked about struggles he’s had to overcome to reach his goal, he says time management has been his biggest issue: ìI like to think that I have good time management, and so I find time to do all of my homework and get all of my assignments done and swim, but it definitely takes a lot of sense of balance to figure out when, like if I have an essay due in two days, when I have to skip practice just because there’s too much.
Looking back on this season as well as past ones, Bollettieri says, This season has been slow but steady progress, I’d say. In the past, I’ve seen a lot more, just, quick jumps and faster times, but I’ve been slowly dropping time in my key events, and that’s nice to see, but I’m starting to get to the point where I have to look for very small things to change to drop time. I think this season I’ve been the most focused and engaged. This season, I think is when I’ve been most into swimming, and most actually focusing on the sport, rather than just doing it for physical exercise or just for fun. I’ve been very focused on getting these times this season.
He also says that one of his biggest accomplishments has been making the cut for the sectionals team in the spring and being able to go to his first big meet where he can see how far he can go for the future.
The question remains as to whether he will continue his swimming career after high school. Bollettieri shares that he will probably not make a profession out of swimming, but I have thought about swimming in college, I can see myself doing that, but I have not put a ton of effort into thinking about it.î
