Cathy Gomez knows exactly what to do when she's feeling anxious or when things in her daily life aren't going well.
She jumps into the pool.
“It's very therapeutic,” she said. “Swimming really relaxes me. I forget about anything bad that happened in my day. It lets me forget about everything. It's really helped me a lot.”
But the pool isn't just a Zen zone for Gomez, a senior at Olympic High School. It's also a place where she excels as a member of the Team Santa Monica swimming club.
Gomez is scheduled to attend the Speedo Sectionals later this month at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, where she will race against talented athletes from throughout the region.
It's a chance for Gomez to test her skills against elite competition while preparing for possible future opportunities in the collegiate ranks and at the junior national level.
“She's one of the top swimmers I've seen, and I've been coaching for about 7 years,” said Jimmy Dabney, an associate head coach for Team Santa Monica. “She has a lot of ability and natural talent. She's a racer. She's very competitive and is not scared of the moment. She always has her eyes on the moment.
“The more you compete with someone at a certain level, the more you improve on your own standard. So it's a good opportunity to be there and race and see how she looks.”
Gomez has looked at home in the water for more than a decade. When she was 5 years old, she said, she jumped into the pool at her uncle's swimming practice. A few lessons later, she was a regular.
Gomez splashed onto the swimming scene at Santa Monica High School, where she started her prep career. As a freshman, she qualified for the CIF Southern Section championships in the 500-yard freestyle after clocking in at 5 minutes 3 seconds during the Ocean League finals. She also earned a section bid in the 100-yard butterfly race and was a member of the Vikings' qualifying 200-yard medley relay squad.
As a sophomore, Gomez placed 11th at the section finals in the 500 free with a time of 5 minutes 5.55 seconds.
“I love the feeling of competing with different people and different teams and knowing what you're capable of with other people around,” she said.
Gomez has trained with Team Santa Monica for about four years, and she currently squeezes eight practices in Culver City into her weekly schedule. She said it helps that she gets more individual attention on schoolwork at Olympic High School than she did at Samohi.
“The environment feels very comfortable,” she said of Olympic, the Santa Monica-Malibu district's continuation campus. “Samohi is really big, there are a lot of students and teachers and the teachers can't focus on you one-on-one. At Olympic, you have more access to the teachers. They really give their time and energy to focus on you, and they will help you to the extent that they can.”
Gomez has become a leader for the other swimmers in her cohort, Dabney said. She wants to study sociology in college and become a social worker.
For now, though, Gomez is trying to enjoy her time in the pool as a competitor.
“All the excitement, getting nervous, having butterflies when you're about to dive into the water - I love that feeling,” she said.