80 or so guys in the country uh qualified for the 100 breaststroke , which is what I qualified for , so that was , that was pretty cool and actually I qualified for the meet at the pool here in Madison . So , uh , I was swimming under my club , but the , the Badgers swim team was kind of there cheering for me because I , I was committed at the time so that was super fun and um kind of getting that time in my future home pool was that was really cool . So the Olympic trials was , that was the craziest meet I've ever been to .
Hello , I'm Drew Gertofffner . I'm a swimmer here at UW Madison . You can check me out on Next Level Prep .
Hello , my name is Drew Gerhofner . I , I'm a swimmer here at UW Madison . Uh , some of the best advice I'd say I've been given from coaches or mentors is just to stay with , with the process , trust the process , uh , showing day in and day out , because when you stick , when you're consistent with stuff , you'll be better off than if you skip a day and , uh , just being consistent with , with your work with your school .
You could jump in the warm up pool with literally anyone you wanted to or see anyone you wanted to , and for me that was the coolest , coolest experience experience because . I was able to swim in the same meet as my idols and compete against my idols even though I wasn't in the lane next to them . I was still in the same meet competing for the same goal , and for me that experience was huge because getting to race in a big setting like that was so new to me and I can't remember the last time I was that nervous to get up on the blocks , but um yeah it it was a good experience that I that I could put under my belt for bigger meets to come .
um I mean we're spending 20 plus hours a week together and being able to have someone to train with and push you constantly it's uh that's super nice and and then just working with the coaches on tech technical stuff and um . Uh , refining the fine details of my stroke has , has really been helpful kind of early on when I started swimming , I , I was good , but I , I wasn't like at the top necessarily and then , um , kind of COVID hit and then I , I stopped swimming for a little bit and I , I took a little break , but then when I started swimming again I really like fell back in love with the sport and I , um , I really worked really , really hard and . And I started seeing times that I was like yeah man like these this is realistic like I could go to trials I could win uh win state and national level meets so um just uh keep working day in and day out like that was something that I just had to stick to and trust the process with Olympic trials , the way that it goes is there's time standards .
