ODUSports.com sat down with Monarch swimmer Carter Watson for a Q&A.
Q: How long have you been swimming?
A: I started swimming competitively when I was seven for my summer city league. I started swimming year round when I was nine years old and I have been doing it for about 14 years now.
Q: What event(s) do you participate in competition?
A: Usually I swim the 100 freestyle, the 200 freestyle, the 200 individual medley, and if it is offered, the 400 individual medley.
Q: For individual medley, what strokes are you swimming, free, back, etc.?
A: The individual medley is all four, so a 200m is a 50-fly, 50-back, 50-breaststroke, and 50-free and 400m is the same thing but its 100m for each stroke.
Q: Why did you choose ODU?
A: I had a friend that went here, he is a couple years older, and he came here and swam. His name is Jason Brame and he had always said good things about it. They came and visited our team to recruit one of my friends, and when they were visiting him, I went and introduced myself and I managed to talk to Carol on the phone after that, and I came down for a visit and I really loved it and just went on from there.
Q: With no one having a major influence in the swimming world, how did you get into it?
A: Well my mom saved me from drowning when I was approximately two. She saw me walking around on the bottom of the pool at two years old, so she jumped in and saved me and so the following winter she put me in swim lessons. She wanted me to learn all of the strokes, instead of just freestyle, so they put me in what’s called tadpoles, and they were like, this kid is better than what we would usually get here so lets put him on the team. So I started out with the team and then just kept getting better and better and just went on from there.
Q: What is your favorite activity to do outside of swimming?
A: I really like hiking. I do hiking as often as possible. Hiking, camping, anything like that. I like other sports as well, I play them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I am any good at them.
Q: Who was your role model growing up, either in your personal life or in the swimming world?
A: In my personal life, it was probably coach, my club coach, T.J. Lissten. I saw him every day. He always knew what was going on and he always had everything together. He was a constant figure and just seemed like he had his head together and always knew what to do next, like what I should do to complete my goals. He helped me find colleges and apply and all that sort of stuff.
Q: What would you like to do after you graduate?
A: I take my GRE in about a month. I am going to start applying to colleges to graduate schools. Hopefully I will get a graduate degree and pursue a career in conservation biology. So maybe I want to work with the reintroduction of species so if a species is gone extinct in an area or no longer exists, take either a captive bred animal or a rehabilitated animal and reintroduce them to that area.
Q: What is one of the most difficult things about swimming on a college team as opposed to a high school/club team?
A: I want to say morning practice is probably the hardest part, but I had that in high school. I think just the difference is classes, because in high school, you can float through high school and not really do much, but in college, it strenuous. You are a lot more stressed about college courses than you are about high school courses.
Q: How do you keep your body from getting exhausted or over used with multiple practices every day?
A: It is really important to eat properly. You have to put the right things in your body to help your body do what it needs to do. You also need to get, it seems like the same old thing, but it is really important to get as much sleep as possible. Anything you can do to prevent exhaustion because you are going to be tired. Everybody knows, you swim tired, you wake up in the morning your tired, and you go to bed tired. You just got to keep at it and sometimes you have to turn your brain off and say I am not tired, I am going to work hard today. You just have to ignore your body.
Q: What is your pre-race/meet ritual? Do you have one?
A: I like to go behind the blocks and do a personal warm up and I like to listen to music especially a couple of hours leading up to the meet. I don’t usually listen to it right before I swim, but I find that the less I think about the race, the more likely I am to do well, so I figure I do all my preparation well before I get there, and once I get there it is game time, there is nothing else I can do.
Q: What is your favorite swimming moment? Is there a race that you won that is super special?
A: Probably, in recent memory, the coolest thing that happened is when we beat East Carolina last year at home. I wasn’t personally involved in it but when Sydney ran down their last guy on the 400 free relay, which is the very last event, he ran him down and out touched him even after diving into the water well behind him and we ended up winning because of that relay specifically, so we were celebrating, everyone was cheering and everyone was going crazy. It was such a fun meet and we ended up winning and it was probably one of the coolest events to happen.
Q: What is your favorite food?
A: Favorite food would probably be my mom’s lasagna. Whenever she makes lasagna at home, she usually makes a tray for me and then she makes one for the family, and I get my own just because I devour it, but lasagna isn’t one of those things you get to often.
Q: What is your favorite holiday to celebrate?
A: I really like Christmas because growing up all of my cousins and aunts and uncles would all come back to visit. I live in the same town as my grandparents and they would come and stay with my grandparents. Every year I would get to see all of my cousins and I knew I was going to see them. It doesn’t happen so much now that we are all grown up and have our own lives going on but they sometimes still stop in, so that is probably my favorite.
Q: Have you ever traveled anywhere outside of the US? Where?
A: Yes I have. I went on a cruise when I was younger. Not technically outside of the States, but that was kind of cool and then for spring break this past year I went and spent a week in London and at the end of that week I went to Ireland for a couple of days.
Q: Do you have any hidden talents that many do not know about you?
A: Well I did play the trombone in high school and middle school so that could be one.