Petra is a masters swimming coach, as well as a record holding masters swimmer. She recently graduated from the University of Maryland where she set an ACC record during her two years on the varsity team. She is from the Czech Republic and has many interesting stories about swimming on their national team. Here is an interview with Petra.

Q: Where are you from?
A: I am from Nachod in the Czech Republic which is in the mountains, 2 hours northeast of Prague. My hometown actually has a couple of ski slopes right in town. My parents put me on skis when I was 3 years old and I hated it, at first. I started sliding and got so angry I was throwing my skis and didn’t want to get back on. I was a feisty kid! I love skiing now and ended up doing a lot of it when I was a kid.

Q: How did you start swimming?
A: I started swimming when I was little. Both my sister and I were diagnosed with scoliosis. My grandmother (mom's mom) is a pediatrician and believes swimming is good for scoliosis. So my parents and grandparents taught me how to swim. My mother never did swimming as a sport although she was on the Czech national team for track and field. She went to the World University Games and did javelin, shot put and sprints.

Q: When did you start competitive swimming?
A: When I was 7 my parents wanted to sign me up for a swim team. They took me to a tryout but I was crying because I didn't want to go. I complained that none of my friends were going. My parents said, “We don't care. You're going!” After two weeks, I didn't want to leave. Breaststroke was my stroke, and in my first meet, a couple of months later, I got 4th in the 50 breast. I was pretty upset about that. I went to my coach and told him I would never lose again! My coaches didn't have to motivate me. I was very competitive.

Q: How did you do after that?
A: When I was ten, I won my first national age group championship. We have national championships for 10 year olds, 11 & 12 year olds, etc. I won the 10 year old national championships in 50 breaststroke. I kept having fun, getting faster and making more frequent appearances in the top times for my age group. We don't have college swimming to the same extent as here in the US. Everything is done through club teams. All of Europe is pretty much like that.

Q: Tell me about the Czech Sport Schools.
A: In Czech Republic, there are sports schools. You get recruited. You can start in the 5th grade and go all the way through high school. It’s kind of like a boarding school, although if you live in town where the sports school is, you can live at home. They build your school schedule around your training. They still have these schools. They were recruiting me when I was 10, but my parents didn't want me to leave and live five hours away. I stayed home and kept training with my club team. I was swimming for an hour a day, maybe four times a week. I was also doing track and field. I loved to be outside and add variety.

I ended up going to the Czech sport school when I was 13. Boy, was that an experience! You go home once every two months. You have training and meets on the weekends. In the dorms, you live with older kids. Everybody is really competitive. You have to stand your ground and take care of yourself. It was a good learning experience. By that time I had been on the junior national team for 2 years. The junior national team has kids under 18. We did international competitions, mostly in Europe -- Germany, Hungary, England, Poland, Italy and the Netherlands. It was a fun time. I stayed at the sports school for a year. When my coach left, I went back to my home town. I was still on the national team, just living and training at home.

Q: Did you continue swimming?
A: After my freshman year of high school, I was sick of swimming. I talked to my coach, and he said, whenever you feel like this, go home and I don't want to see you for a week. But I needed to do something else. I took a year off and did non-sports stuff. After that I started coaching little kids and then started swimming a little in the second semester of my junior year. My body had changed - freestyle was now my fastest stroke. When I came back, I swam for 4 months and made the senior national team. I won the 50 free, got 2nd in the 100 free and made top five in the 100 breast at the Czech National Championships. After four months of training, I was back. I think that it was good that I took that break. I started enjoying it again.

Q: Did you swim in college?
A: After my senior year in high school my Mom bought me a ticket to the US to travel with my friends. My English teacher (an American) put that trip together for us. For a couple of weeks, we stayed in a camp near Lake Erie where I worked as a lifeguard to make a little money. One weekend, some people saw me swimming in Lake Erie and asked me, "Are you on a swim team? Our son swims at the University of Indiana and maybe they would like you to swim for them.” I said, “Sure. You can tell the coach my times.” I had no idea how things work with college swimming here, that you can get scholarships, that there are different divisions, shortly said I had no clue about anything. Soon after that, my friends and I left the camp and started to drive across the country to do sightseeing and visit some of the great US National parks.

I was in Los Angeles and somehow the parents of the IUP swimmer got hold of me. They said the University of Indiana coach was interested in me and would give me a scholarship. I met with the IUP coach, Peter Ward, at the airport the day we were leaving the US, to discuss the details. Few years after all of this Peter and I still have a good “strange” recruiting story to tell about a girl that was swimming in a lake and ended up “making some waves” in US college swimming. I called my Mom at 3AM in the morning to tell her that I would be going to school in the US. She said, "What, you better come home first." I went home to get a visa, do my SAT and Toefel exams and do the paperwork. I started college at home so that I would have something to do for a year and kept swimming on the Czech national team.

The next year I started to swim at the University of Indiana. The coach who recruited me got a different coaching job after a while and that’s when I started to think about transferring. Also, Indiana was Division II. I didn't have much competition and wanted more. I liked DC for the international atmosphere and job market and heard Jim Wenhold at UM had a good sprint program. So, I came to UM and swam for 2 years. I was still on the Czech national team and continued competing in the European championships and World Cups. My 200 medley relay at the 2000 European championships in Spain broke the Czech National record, I was the anchor. At the 2001 ACC's our 200 free relay broke the ACC record. Suzy Catterson, Kelly Bowman, Katy Novotny, and I were on the team. It was an awesome training group.

Q: How did you get involved in masters swimming?
A: Since I got a full scholarship at UM I loaded up and got three degrees: in marketing, finance, and economics. I started coaching Terrapin Masters in my 5th year at UM and after that started doing some masters meets. I’ve been doing that ever since. I’m still breaking national records. I’m not training too much – I like quality, variety and cross training. For my cross training I run, jump rope, do medicine balls, heavy bag and speed bag (boxing). I like to get on a bike, too. I play soccer and volleyball in the summer, on the grass in Crofton. Or we shoot baskets. I like to do lots of stuff outside of the pool.

Q: What are your future plans?
A: Right now I work in sports marketing, for a company that puts on college football games. I started coaching little kids, just a few times a week, to be able to stay around the pool and pass on my knowledge and experience. My husband, Drew, and I would like to start a family in the near future. I am going to stay active to keep in good shape. I think that even with a family, I will keep swimming. I think it is good to keep swimming even when you are pregnant and definitely afterwards as well.