My Cousin

#2 Santiago's hero is Joe DiMaggio. Is there any public figure, from sports or elsewhere, whom you especially admire? Why?

My Cousin

The person that I greatly admire is my cousin Kelly Stefanyshyn. She is well known in the media in Canada, and is an awesome swimmer. In the past year in short course World Cup meets, Kelly has won 8 gold, 3 silver, and 1 bronze. She also won a silver and a bronze in the championship meet.

Recently, she moved to Vancouver with her mom and younger sister Di-Di where she can get better training for herself. She'll be competing at the Pan Am Games this summer in the 100M and 200M back. I think that the move took a lot of courage for her, because her brother and father had to stay behind. I would be frightened to go into a new swim club where I knew no one, but knew that the swimmers there were of high caliber. It's a lot of work to leave friends and family behind as well, knowing that you're not going to see them for quite a while.

Also, I greatly respect her for the amount of training she's doing now, and what she has done in the past. During the school year she would be up and swimming by 6a.m. for two hours before she went to school. Then after school she would go swimming with the other Canadian Kodiaks in her swim club. Now in Vancouver she trains pretty much every single day, in preparation for competition meets. She also watches her diet really well, and only pigs out once and a while. To me, that is a lot of work that I just couldn't do.

For her swim meets, Kelly gets to travel around the world to go into competitions. Because of this, she pretty much has to give her social life up. She sacrifices so much of her time and I admire that dedication in her. I'm actually pretty envious of her for being able to go around the world. She has admitted to me though, that sometimes she never really sees the cities they're in because they whisk her to the next competition right away.

Another point that makes me respect her is that she deals very well with the media. They come up to her right after a race when she's still trying to catch her breath and ask her tons of questions. And if she came in second place, they try to get her to bash the swimmer that came in first(but she never does anyway). She is very patient, and never says an unkind word to them. I'd probably tell them to get lost until I caught my breath, but that's probably why God never made me a high caliber athlete.