Wearing a pair of blue goggles, Matthew Chung (12) raises himself out of the water with ease. Smoothly dipping in and out of the water, he betrays no sign that the temperature of the water is different than that of the air. 

Matthew can be found at the pool at various times — for practices both before and after school, as well as weekend races. All this time dedicated to the sport has played a big part in shaping his lifestyle.

“Time management [is a] huge thing for sure,” Matthew said. “Obviously [swimming] takes up so much time, I have to figure out when to do everything efficiently, and not waste any time. And then I also have to sleep early sometimes, which takes even more time out of my day cause I have to get up early the next morning. So that’s probably the biggest thing that this sport has given me.”

From having to sleep early in order to wake up at 4:40 a.m. to partake in 5:30 a.m. practices to having after school practices run until 6 p.m. sometimes, the sport is very time consuming. In order to spend so many hours of his day swimming, Matthew finds it necessary to work efficiently.

Matthew’s competitive side highlights his love for certain aspects of swimming. Having an older brother who also swam at the time, Matthew was just following in his brother’s footsteps when he first joined the sport. Although initially, it was not his choice but his parents’ to enroll him in swimming at age 5, it has developed into a huge part of his life.

“[One of my favorite parts is] the racing. I’m super competitive, and I love winning,” Matthew said. “Plenty of times, I’ve wanted to quit because practice is a huge drag, and it takes up so much time during the day, but the feeling when I race is probably the best thing about the sport.”

The competitiveness that drives his love for racing not only shows in swimming, but is also apparent in the activities he does while spending time with his friends, whether that be playing games or partaking in recreational sports. 

“He’s a ‘work hard, play hard’ kind of guy,” friend Ray Wang (12) said. “He gets all his schoolwork done but when it comes to hanging out with us like playing video games he’s also really competitive.”

One specific instance of this competitiveness came with learning how to play table tennis for the first time.

“After we practiced for two hours one day, the next day he just went with our usual group of friends and actually managed to beat a bunch of them,” friend Gabriel Yang (12) said. “He got really competitive, so that was always fun.”

Swimming can be hard with its early practices and intense physical exertion. Despite his individual competitiveness, a big motivator for Matthew during practice is his teammates.

“It’s hard to do by yourself and that’s fine. A lot of people don’t practice by themselves. They always practice with the team because sometimes you get burnt out really fast and nothing is fun anymore when you’re doing it by yourself,” he said.

Throughout the changes in his life — moving from coast to coast and school to school — his teammates have always been there for him. 

“I used to live in New Jersey for the first ten years of my life, then I moved to California, so I had three different schools ever since coming to California,” Matthew said. “But my swim team … was like my second family. I knew everybody on the team for a long time. Even newcomers who came to the team later: they were embraced really quickly and [the] bond we had — it was pretty strong.”

This bond with his team helped him while transitioning from school to school. As a new-to-Harker freshman, he was able to assimilate into the community easily.

“I was worried that I’d have to make new friends again, going from Basis to Harker, but because I had two friends who [were] already on my swim team when I first joined Harker, it was pretty easy to settle in and make a lot of friends since they introduced me to pretty much everybody,” he said. 

Despite his initial worries, Matthew made friends quickly. Although he sometimes comes off as a man of few words in his classes, he speaks a lot and has fun with his friends.

“He’s a pretty good friend. He always tries to help me out,” Andrew Chang (12) said. “We used to volunteer together: that was the first time we really got closer.”

Not only has the support of others aided him through changes in school and during practices, Matthew finds that teammates, friends and other audience members help his performance at races as well.

“When I feel like my teammates are watching me, I get motivated to perform,” he said. “That’s probably one of the biggest things: the bigger the stage, the more I want to swim fast, because I know a lot of people will be watching … that gets me pretty motivated.”