Fancy Cheng is a freshman majoring in communication and an LAS newswriting intern. Swimming is a big part of her life, and she joined the Illini Swim Club to keep it going at U of I.
I didn’t expect my first semester at U of I to smell like chlorine.
Not literally, although it often does now, but in the way that everything suddenly became measured in laps, split times, and deep breaths. Growing up in Shenzhen, China, a metropolis that feels perpetually on the move, Champaign’s calm, slower pace was a stark contrast. The first week here, I kept waiting for the “big city noise” to arrive. It never did, and I slowly accepted that.
This is only my second time in the U.S., and the first time I’ve lived here long enough to feel the weight of a real routine. I wanted a college life that felt like more than a fixed schedule between classrooms and my dorm. I wanted to belong on campus, not just pass through it.
So I decided to join the Illini Swim Club.
Swimming is the one thing that has always made sense to me. I started training in primary school, became the captain of my high school swim team, and in the water, my body knows what to do even when my brain is anxious. Swimming has always been the place where I feel the most confident.
But honestly? The swim club scared me at first.
It was Quad Day, and the campus felt like a giant open-air marketplace of possibilities. I approached the swim table, trying to sound casual, like I wasn’t already imagining myself failing the tryout in front of strangers. I asked about the bar for the tryout, and the time standards sounded…kind of challenging. My heart sank a little. Over the summer, I’d been slacking, in the very real “I just graduated high school, too happy to do tiring things” way. I swam far less than I told myself I would. Fortunately, I later learned the time standards were in yards, not meters. The worry didn’t disappear though, but it shifted into motivation.
I wanted to get into the swim team so badly that I decided to commit to the challenge.
For two weeks, I woke up at 5:30 a.m., arriving at the ARC by 6:30 a.m. The mornings were dark and quiet, and some days I had to negotiate with myself just to get out of bed. I practiced my main events: 50 fly, 50 back, 100 IM, and 200 IM, again and again. After two weeks, I regained my feelings for water, where the work started to feel natural. When tryouts came, I swam like someone who wanted it, and I passed.
My first official training was on a Wednesday night. I remember that detail because I spent the afternoon replaying worst-case scenarios in my head. What if I wasn’t fast enough? What if I struggled socially? Yes, I’m a communication major, but what if I’m awkward? What if I don’t understand the practice sets, since all my past trainings were in Chinese? That part turned out to be very real. I didn’t understand a lot of what was written on the board, like “kick” and “sprint”, and phrases like “we’re going on the top,” or “take the bottom.” It felt like learning a new dialect. The team members were nice, though, and explained things until I understood. Soon, it all made sense.
What really helped me get to know people was signing up for meets.
In October, I went to my first meet in the U.S. at Saint Louis University. It was small, but it boosted my confidence in a big way. I finally understood my performance in yards, a length I’d never competed in before. I even got first and second place in my events, kudos to myself. After the meet, we had dinner together, and I thought: This is what I thought a university swim club would be like.
Then came Ohio State University.
That meet was much, much, much tougher. Only the top 20 could make it into the finals, and there could be 150 people in a prelim. The pool became a battlefield where every tenth of a second mattered.
The weeks leading up to it were the hardest. For about three weeks, I struggled to balance study, work, and swim. My October class schedule didn’t care that I had a meet coming up; assignments and exams piled up. My daily work as an LAS newswriting intern still needed to get done; evenings were sacrificed for the swim trainings, five times a week during that period. Looking back, my calendar looked intimidating.
But I survived. Then the Ohio State weekend arrived like a checkpoint in a video game.
I traveled with teammates, and the hours on the road were surprisingly comforting. At the hotel, I was assigned roommates, and it was fun living temporarily as a team.
In the competition, I reaped what I sowed. I made it into the finals for my 50 back and 100 IM. I also earned the chance to swim backstroke for the women’s 4x50 Medley relay, a moment that truly felt like a team, with all of us connected by one race. This is part of what I like about swimming. Although it’s mostly an individual sport, moments like these, where you compete for your team, really motivate me.
Later, when I watched the video of my 100 IM final filmed by my friend, I heard my teammates shouting my name in the background. I’ve competed many times before, but I don’t usually hear a lot of cheering specifically for me. Here, the vibe was hyped up and supportive, and it made me feel instantly that I belonged.
The meet at Ohio State was a meaningful experience. As I left the stadium, I was surprised to see that it started snowing. Soft and light, it felt like the world had been switched into a quieter mode. It never snows in Shenzhen, and I hadn’t seen snow in years, so I just stood there and watched it land on my sleeves and disappear. It honestly felt like a dream. Watching the snowflakes fall, it hit me: This semester has been full of firsts, and somehow I’m starting to belong in all of them.
Joining the Illini Swim Club has impacted me in ways I couldn’t have predicted. It’s become more than a place to train; it’s become a bridge between Shenzhen and Champaign, between who I was and who I’m becoming. I came to U of I hoping to meet people from various backgrounds and have a good college experience. In a way, I found that experience in the most familiar place imaginable—water.
And if my first semester has taught me anything, it’s this: Sometimes the fastest way to feel at home is to dive in and trust yourself to swim.