By Katie MacBride, Online Editor-in-Chief
Do you remember learning to swim? Did you ever have that scary feeling of taking your floaties off for the first time, or being filled with excitement when you finally swam across the pool by yourself?
For many young swimmers, they get to share these experiences with senior Marrissa Hempfer.
Last school year, Hempfer moved to the Outer Banks from Long Island, New York, where she used to teach private swim lessons to kids, aged anywhere from 3 months to 12 years. In an effort to continue this passion in a new town, Hempfer took a lifeguarding class at the Outer Banks Family YMCA in Nags Head and completed the required swim tests to teach lessons.
“One of my favorite things is when I do private lessons since it is one-on-one, and especially when I have it with the little ones,” Hempfer said.
Hempfer knows all the time she has put into the swim tests and classes has been worth it when she sees her hard work pay off.
“I have this 3-year-old named Conner Price that I’ve been teaching since I first started, and now he can swim freestyle better than a lot of teenagers in the pool,” Hempfer said with a smile. “It’s the most amazing thing to watch them get better.”
Not only does Hempfer lifeguard and teach swim lessons at the YMCA three days a week, but she is also a coach for the YMCA’s White swim team. Those kids range from 5 to 10 years old and are just learning how to do freestyle and other more complicated strokes like backstroke and breaststroke.
Hempfer takes pride in being a swim instructor and coach, but her relationship with the water dives much deeper.
Hempfer’s mother, Toni Ewell, swam competitively in high school and was part of Ocean Rescue her senior year of high school and for two years of college. Ewell’s history influenced Hempfer to get into swimming, but this is also where Hempfer’s passion for the water started to drift.
Her mother has battled breast cancer twice since Hempfer was in third grade. Ewell had a double mastectomy — when both breasts are surgically removed — after her first diagnosis, but the cancer still returned. This was a huge shock to Hempfer’s family, especially since her family had no history of breast cancer.
“When she got it again, we were told that she was never going to have kids again and hospice came in, saying she was going to die. And hearing that news in third grade, I was like, ‘What are you guys talking about?’ ” Hempfer explained. “But they did complete chemo. She was really sick and in the hospital a lot, but after everything she came out perfectly fine.”
After Ewell’s battle with cancer, she defied the odds again when she became pregnant and gave birth to Hempfer’s little brother, Michael, a year later.
“We call him our ‘chemo baby’ because he was never supposed to theoretically happen and was like a miracle,” Hempfer said. “He was the thing that pulled us all back together after everything.”
The ups and downs of Hempfer’s family life made her relationship with the water more complicated. At one point, Hempfer wanted to give up on swimming entirely, but Ewell’s history with the sport helped fuel Hempfer’s passion for the water, and Ewell pushed Hempfer to get involved with a job where she could swim.
“My mom always tells me to ‘Suck it up, buttercup’ whenever I would complain about going to work, but I am grateful that she continued to push me because now I have something I really love to do,” Hempfer said.
Junior Katie MacBride can be reached at 21macbrideka62@daretolearn.org.
