It’s the day of the Little East Conference swimming and diving championships. With not nearly enough seating to fit all viewers, the crowd has no choice but to stand, gathering dangerously close to the edges of the pool to get the best view.

The announcer begins to introduce the next swimmers. With each new name a cheer from the crowd follows. Lastly, “In lane 9, from Bridgewater State, Cameron Srebnick!” the announcer shouts, and the fans roar in response.

Srebnick gleams at the crowd, and is the first to step to the ledge of the pool, readying himself for the race. He jumps up and down, practicing his diving form, adrenaline coursing through him. 

Finally, the countdown starts and he bends down, grabbing the ledge of the pool. The crowd quiets in anticipation, the buzzer sounds, and Srebnick leaps into a dive across the pool.

This was everything to him, the reason he pursued college. Unfortunately, his days of championships with the swim team were about to be harshly interrupted. 

“So it started off as I went to college to swim, because, you know, in high school I never really cared about school necessarily,” he says. “To me school was just the thing that got me to swim.”

Currently, Srebnick, age 19, is a sophomore in college, residing on campus at Bridgewater State University. 

Due to his lack of interest in his regular classes his first year of college, Srebnick put his academics on the back burner. He put all his time into swimming, and had his grades suffer from this. 

At the end of his first semester as a freshman, Srebnick was kicked off the swimming team due to him not reaching the team’s minimum academic requirement of a 2.0 GPA. He would not be allowed to swim competitively until he raised his grades.

With no swimming to distract him from his academics, and a new stake added to do well in school, Srebnick had no choice but to pick up the slack of his first half of the year. As he re-acclimated to his academics, he revived his enjoyment for his communications major. 

“In my second semester I had a 3.7 GPA, I think it was.” he says, “Now I’m definitely here for school, now that I’ve reawakened my love for learning, I guess.”

Srebnick is currently majoring in communications, with a concentration in public relations. He states it is “Basically like the team of people behind a social media page who make you look like a good person.”

Relighting his enjoyment of the academic aspects of college did not mean that Srebnick ditched his love for the swim team. He returned to the team as soon as the second semester of his freshman year ended, having plans to pursue swimming, even after college. 

“I don’t think that I’d be on an Olympic level or anything but I could do masters swimming,” he states, “which is the equivalent of, I don’t know, like a men’s league. Masters league swimming is basically just what people who are not the best in the world do.”

Srebnick is ranked 18th of 21 in swimming at his Division III school. Recordings of swim times support that he is consistently and exponentially improving with time as he swims with Bridgewater State. 

Being voted by his team as the person who had the best championships, Srebnick looks back on this most recent season of competitions, as well as his teammates among the swim team very fondly. 

Srebnicks exponentially improved this year, beating nine of his own personal bests in January and February of 2023 alone. His biggest improvements were his freestyle stroke, breaking 4 of six personal bests, and his butterfly stroke, breaking all three of his previous personal bests.

“Our team had a lot of success,” Srebnick states, “We ended up winning our championship and I feel like that is something important to know because all of our training for all of, jeez, six months, was worth it basically.”

After having the wake up call of failing off the swim team, Srebnick learned to balance both academics and extracurriculars in a way that he can enjoy his major and his swimming without losing sight of one or the other. 

Srebnick’s remaining two years at Bridgewater State will be spent maintaining the equilibrium of his two biggest interests, public relations and competitive swimming, one of which he forgot about until he forcibly lost the other. 

“Failing off the team was something that taught me a lot because it rekindled my flame for wanting to learn,” Srebnick says, “and while it’s something that is a negative experience, it’s something that I look back on fondly because it led to an even better experience towards my future”