Discover the Power of Relays with World Record Holder Nancy Kryka, EP 216

Welcome to the award-winning Champions Mojo, hosted by two world record-holding athletes and health coaches. Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions And now your hosts, kelly Palace and Maria Parker.

Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast. I am your host, kelly Palace, and, as usual, i am with my co-host, maria Parker. Hey Maria, hey Kelly, it's great to be with you here today. Yes, and Maria, this is a special edition of Champions Mojo from the pool deck, and we have a great interview for you today. It's brief, it's short, but it's powerful, Yeah, and we.

I wasn't there, but I was able to listen to the interview and some great takeaways.

Yeah, we hope you'll stick around and catch the takeaways. And here we go. We are here for on deck inspiration at the YMCA National Championships in Fort Lauderdale And I am with Nancy Cricka, who swims with the Sarasota Sharks Y Masters. Nancy is part of 18 national and world record relays, so we want to talk about relays and being a team player today with Nancy. So, nancy, just answer me the question of why are relays so important to you?

I've always loved relays. I've always asked people to be on relays with me In fact, i beg them because sometimes I always thinking of their individual events but I always swim my fastest and my best when I'm swimming for someone else. So when I'm on a relay, that's when I do my best and when I have my most fun, and through that I've been able to set, as you said, 18 US and world records at this Y meet. I have three more, so it's really actually 21.

That's awesome. So your best event is the 53. You like that the best. You swam at Arizona State University, right And so share with a little story you talked about with me offline about what your ASU coach told you.

All right, I wrote my coach back then It was by letter, in the mail. I said do you ever cut anybody? And she said, no, I never cut anybody. But when I got to Arizona it was the best women's swimming team at the time for anyone in college. It had all the fastest swimmers. And I got there and she said to me I have so many good swimmers, I don't need you because you're just a 25 yard freestyle swimmer and I don't need you. You don't have a stroke. And so I was cut.

So you are this world record holder and, nancy, you're being very humble because you hold a lot of other records. You hold a lot of LMSC records. Individually, you are a great swimmer, but it's the other part of you that you're a player. Have you ever thought about how that just plays out in your life?

When I worked at IBM, we had 7,000 employees. They were all the same age. We all started at the same time. We were all really good friends And I never felt that we were competitive or stabbing each other in the back. We all worked together. To me, i was always a team player. I always did my best, helping other people and trying to be my best for the team, and it always made me the best person I could be.

Yeah, i think this is such a good point And I'm on the Melbourne Masters and we had 52 relays at the Routing Games meet And some of those people it was their first time ever swimming and they ended up being world ranked at the end of the year because of that. So it's a good selling point to. It's a great place to start. You do swim faster for other people. Now what is being part of the Sarasota Sharks?

team mean to you, because I'm on the Sarasota Sharks team. We have a really good coach that helps us to be our best And I've gotten lots of little tips, but it's the camaraderie of all the people that I swim with, the interfacing with people who love to swim, just like I love to swim, and I just enjoy being with my team. Yeah.

And so the very last question is what goes through your mind?

when you hit that water. One time a doctor asked me that question and I didn't think I did. But I am always listening to my body and thinking how can I be better with my strokes, What I should be thinking about keeping my elbows up or getting a good turn, or thinking about my breathing and perfect strokes always.

Okay, so why would a doctor ask you what you?

think when you dive in, the pathologist actually was a fellow teammate of mine and he was trying to distract me because he was doing a surgery on skin cancer and he was trying to take my mind off of it. So that was this conversational thing to take my mind off of what he was doing.

Aren't those doctors?

tricky Yeah.

Nancy, what a pleasure and what an inspiration you are. Thanks for spending this time with me today. Thank you, kelly.

Stay tuned for the takeaways.

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And now the takeaways.

So Nancy Cricka could easily be introduced as a multiple world record holder, because she is, and I love it when people are introduced as an Olympic champion. They may be an Olympic champion on a relay And I think in swimming it is a big accolade to be a world record holder, an Olympic champion. And so what Individual relay? you're there, you're doing it, and Nancy has 18 actually now 21 US or world records on relays, which we talked about. But that is quite an accomplishment And she loves relays, says that she's just highly motivated, more motivated to swim relays than she is anything else, and it certainly has paid off for her.

Yeah, i could really relate to Nancy. I love the idea that which she said. I swim faster for my teammates than I do for myself, and that's so great. I feel that way too. I push myself on my bike races when I'm doing it as a team much more so than when I'm just doing it for my own personal glory. So I think it's a good thing to remember that swimming is a team sport too, that you can really have a good time. And I guess she came in with 18, but now she has 21 because they got three more. So she got some national records obviously a team player in her whole life. But that's what she's about. I will do more for my people than I will do for myself, and I love that. I can completely relate to that.

Yes, And also we love to talk about how the traits from swimming do wash over into our lives And Nancy is a huge volunteer for our LMSC.

She's been volunteer of the year, she officiates, she's the records keeper for our whole LMSC, which is a lot of work. She's a team player And that's her mojo is she gets motivated to do it for the team And I know that she recruits people to be on relays And I know I love to recruit people to be on relays And it's just, if you're out there listening and you may not even want to enter a meet individually, maybe talk with your teammates about, hey, i just want to dip my toe in the pool And I want to try a relay first And that's a fun way to get into a swim meet and just do relays. Maybe think about that. But anyway, it was great to hear from Nancy and hear that perspective, which I think is novel and new. It's a new mojo, i agree. All right, love you Maria. Love you Bye.

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