Sarah Bonner, thank you so much for such a wonderful article about my grandson Ivan Puskovitch. He is an amazing young man; an athlete and a scholar. He has worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get where he is today. He has my heart. Thank you again!
For someone who has done ten kilometers of swimming every day since he was nine, Ivan Puskovitch, now 21 and an NCAA swimmer, still thinks swimming is fun. Even adding up all the early morning practices, the countless kilometers staring at a black line, the sacrifices from family and friends, and even his struggles to come back after the pandemic, Puskovitch still bubbles with joy and enthusiasm for the sport. “I just love it,” he smiles, explaining how he always did his laps every day, even when his childhood team finished for the season.
For Puskovitch, there was a natural progression from being a kid swimming to being an elite athlete but when splashing around became double workouts Monday to Friday on top of studying for college, the fun can be easily lost. “Especially in modern day swimming, burnout is becoming so popular,” Puskovitch says. “The key is that you have to start the sport in a fun way, fun but productive, and then it’s your job to hang on to that feeling.”
“It’s a gradual transition from the early stages of having fun to coming in to do work. For me, the key was finding enjoyment in that work. I don’t only want to go fast at a meet. Part of what keeps me motivated to swim is going fast every day, seeing daily progression. I feel myself getting rejuvenated with more skill, more speed, and just getting better.”
Finding joy in the daily grind doesn’t mean sacrificing the social part of the sport. “When you’re first getting into swimming at any age, it’s more social and I think that’s important,” Puskovitch explains. “For me, I went from having so much fun with my friends at the wall to having so much fun beating my friends or competing with my friends and still catching up at the wall about it. My best friends are my teammates now and even when we aren’t at the pool we’re hanging out and that’s part of it.”
“You need to take the initial fun and enjoyment of swimming and find a way to inject it into other parts of the sport,” Puskovitch says, including the social side, training, and racing. Even after a decade of focused training with titles and national team accolades, Puskovitch has goals to swim professionally after college and that unwavering motivation still stems from the pure and simple fun he had as a kid in the water.
“I still remember having those kids near me who were having fun at the wall and part of what motivated me to chase greatness was that I was having fun while I was doing it—and what better feeling than to have fun while winning.”
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