These moments after practice, in the dark, alone, were sacred and divine. Though I believed in neither God nor organized religion nor Jesus, I imagined I was in church, experiencing my own sort of baptism. I’d pray to the Pool Gods and Poseidon as I reclined on the lane rope, my body half-submerged, inhaling the embrace of chlorine like it was the last drop of water left in the oasis before I died parched in the desert.
