LUKE RODARTE

In March of 2019, I withdrew from college. I was over halfway through my sophomore year and I left behind division one ski racing as well as a great opportunity to study at a small but revived college in northeastern New Hampshire. I had just finished up my first legitimate season as a collegiate ski racer on the east coast and it was the worst season of my career. I was born and bred in the Western Sierras which made the transition to the east coast environment a challenging one. This coupled with a long-distance relationship going awry took my mental health to an all-time low. For the first time in my life, I felt lost. I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be anymore and shortly after hitting this wall I elected to withdraw from my classes. I had enough time left in the semester that my GPA wasn’t affected, with the hope of one day returning to school but when and where that would be was unknown at the time. I left on our spring break for Salt Lake City, Utah with nothing more than my skis and a week's worth of clothes. I ended up staying for two and a half months. From this change, I nearly lost the people who were closest to me. My family and the people- who I had been lucky enough to be close to for most of my life- were beginning to drift away. There I was: a twenty-one-year-old college dropout with no direction and a lost opportunity. I had never been in a place so low in my life. The weight of knowing how I had let the people I cared about, as well as myself, down was devastating. I was spending all this time wishing I could change what had already happened. I was chasing the wrong vision and it left me in this incredibly depressed space. When I moved back home to Truckee, California in June of 2019 I was given a chance to heal.

The greatest blessing was being welcomed back with open arms by people who had been removing themselves from my life. Without knowing it at the time, this collection of people was something I needed more than anything and also served as a stark reminder to never take them for granted again. I was reminded of how lucky I was to exist in this world; that summer I fell back in love with being alive. I realized that I didn’t need to look to the external noise to find my purpose, I only needed to look within myself to find my fire. I put my whole force into manifesting a better future. I wanted to go back to school, make a comeback in swimming after nearly seven years of being removed from the sport and compete at the highest level. When I chose to commit to ski racing at the age of fourteen, skiing became my life and by the time I came back to the pool with the intent to truly commit I was twenty-one. A new vision had formed in my mind; find a University, commit to their swim team and make Olympic trials, I had less than a year to make this dream a reality.

In January of 2020, I was a re-enrolled student-Athlete at California Lutheran University. I told myself to attack every opportunity and never let anyone tell me that I can't. All my frustration, anger, and eagerness to regain what I lost in my previous experiences with skiing was channeled into my new mission with swimming as I entered a new chapter in my life. I committed to my academics early and was able to get a research fellowship through the university. Shortly after, I broke my first school record in the middle of the season in the 100-yard breaststroke, and at our conference championship, I got another in the 200- yard breaststroke and qualified for NCAA championships. When the pandemic struck and the world got put on hold I told myself to continue to stay the course. When the Olympics got postponed I saw an opportunity. I now had a whole year to prepare for Olympic Trials rather than months. Something that was once a pipe dream was now within reach and the dream of making an Olympic team was brought to the forefront.

Our college season was canceled heading into 2021 but I had already dialed in a training regimen. With no coaching staff being allowed to help, myself and a few teammates attacked this vision with full speed. Weightlifting in my living room and surfing became my cross-training, no coach meant creatively finding ways to improve everyday. As I prepared for my first long course meet in eight years I was excited to see what I could make of it. At the U.S Open in November of 2020, I got my first Olympic trials cut in the 100-meter breaststroke. I was on track with my schedule heading into 2021 with trials being in June. As June inched closer, USA swimming elected to reduce the number of athletes at Olympic Trials in order to abide by COVID-19 protocols. Wave I and Wave II were introduced as the new format with Wave II consisting of the faster time standards and ultimately where the Olympic Team would be selected. To make wave II, I needed to swim into a national rank of #41 or better. The addition of the first wave cut the competitive field by more than half, in past years up to 130 athletes have qualified for a single given event. A month out from trials I re-qualified as a Wave II athlete and was heading in with an overall national rank of #36. When the culmination of my dreams coming out of the biggest shift in my life finally came to a head they didn’t end in exactly the way I had hoped. I won my qualifying heat at Trials but was unable to make it back for Semi-Finals causing my dreams of an Olympic birth to fall short. Despite this, I was ecstatic to compete on that stage and will be continuing my pursuit of an Olympic team as I gear up for 2024.

The biggest shift in perspective that helped me through my struggle was having gratitude for life. It’s a practice, something that has to be done every day. Taking the time to acknowledge the blessings in your life on a daily basis completely changed the way I saw the world. One of my favorite quotes is from the guru Tony Robbins, “When you trade your expectations for appreciation, you have a whole new life.” This rings true in all aspects of life and we get to decide if we want to live this way. You can’t be perfect all the time and I think recognition of that is important. It’s in the nature of being human that we experience the spectrum of emotions. Without darkness, we cannot experience happiness and each situation brings a different lesson. I think there’s always something you can learn beneath the surface no matter how challenging it can be to confront the uncomfortable. Oftentimes it seems that when we are at our lowest points we become open to the greatest change. I hope to continue living as the best version that I can be and inspire the people around me to do the same while knowing that I always have more to learn.

The advice I leave you with is to believe in yourself and learn that failure is a way to become stronger. The most painful losses hold the greatest lessons. Embrace these lessons and recognize the opportunities that arise because of them.

Thanks for listening to my story!