Life sometimes requires you to trust someone and occasionally, to take a leap of faith.
Alyssa Greymont took that leap both figuratively and literally and it has paid off in spades.
Greymont recently signed on to swim for San Jose State University after completing two years at Gavilan College.
She is also among the top seeds at a world swimming championship in San Antonio later in August where she will be representing the USA as one of 22 Americans taking on the world.
And all despite having no hearing in her left ear and 80 percent loss in the right.
Greymont is raising money for her and her coach to fly out to Texas via a GoFundMe page gofundme.com/x3pzfc.
As of Wednesday, she was a little shy of halfway to her goal of $3,000.
Greymont started losing her hearing at the age of 6 when she was diagnosed with moderate hearing loss. By the age of 12 it was nearly all gone.
And the weird thing is, despite testing, Greymont said doctors haven’t pinpointed exactly why her hearing is failing.
“All the tests have come back inconclusive,” Greymont said.
Getting into the pool, Greymont said, she feels liberated to dive in.
“It’s different. It’s flying. Everything just comes out,” she said. “It’s not like running. You don’t feel the exertion as much.”
She decided to swim when Olympic gold medalists Michael Phelps, Ian Crocker and Lenny Krayzelburg visited Morgan Hill in 2004.
“They inspired me to try it and the next thing you know I’m doing it and really enjoying it,” Greymont said. “I don’t have to listen. All I have to do is pay attention to coach and I can do my own thing.”
In 2004, she joined the Makos Swim Club where she has swum for the last 11 years, calling the Morgan Hill Aquatics Center her home pool. Greymont has never competed for another club team.
Greymont will swim in the 100, 200, 400 and 800-meter freestyle events as well as the 400m individual medley.
“For me that’s an accomplishment,” Greymont said. “I’ve had a couple of bad years and the fact that I’ve been able to get back in it is huge.”
The meet will go for six days, starting Aug. 17.
Greymont has formed a bond with Makos coach Tom Lebherz that has allowed her to come out of her shell and excel in swimming. When Greymont got into swimming, her first coach was too intense.
But six years ago, Lebherz stepped in and the dynamic changed.
Although it took a year and a half for the two of them to form a bond, what they call a trust bond.
“Often he can be holding fingers up or do hand motions or just the way he’s standing, I can tell exactly what he wants me to do,” Greymont said.
Trust bond
That trust bond has helped the two of them work through rocky times on the pool deck.
“A lot of times, she lets her emotions get in the way of what she’s doing,” Lebherz said. “It tends to bring her down. But when she gets up there and is emotion-free and just goes, she does a lot better.”
He said the key is keeping the communication between them going to get her out of the emotional valleys that come during meets that often aren’t anything she can control.
He said it took a little while, but when he and the other coaches would give advice, Greymont began to take it more and more serious as the trust developed.
Some of that had to do with Greymont’s former coach. Lebherz said it took a couple of years for Greymont to understand that when he got upset, there was a constructive reason for it.
“Eventually, it became, ‘he’s not yelling and screaming at me, he’s trying to motivate me,’” Lebherz said.
Eventually, around the age of 14/15, Lebherz said, he started to bring up college to her and he said that gave her an extra boost to excel in the pool.
The will to keep going
The years of swimming weren’t always easy for Greymont. Between dealing with emotions, learning how to communicate with others and bad coaches, there were times when Greymont said she had had enough.
“Senior year of high school, I didn’t want to do it any more,” Greymont said. “Getting up early for practice, I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to be done.
“…For me the stress wasn’t worth it, but Tom was like, ‘hey, just give it one more year. Finish the season. Keep trying.’ I finished and I was like, ‘I want to do this again.’”
She continued to work, including practicing through her normal three-week break from swimming in the summer.
Lebherz recalls a time when Greymont missed the starting gun and was left standing on the blocks.
Although it hasn’t always been the case, Greymont usually gets accommodations at meets to allow her to take off with the starter’s gun. Sometimes pool decks have lights that flash and other times, the starter will fire a practice shot so Greymont can get an idea of what to listen for.
But at one meet, the starter didn’t give the practice shot and Greymont missed the start.
She took off from the blocks in tears, Lebherz recalls, thinking it was her fault she missed the starting gun.
It was a common problem at swim meets before the Pacific Swimming began to make accommodations.
“It took us a long time to tell her it’s not your fault. Things will work out down the line,” Lebherz said.
Greymont said her hearing affected relationships with teammates and coaches and trickled down to her self esteem.
“It was very lonely. It was like being in your own separate bubble and not being able to communicate,” Greymont said. “I wasn’t able to let people know, hey, this is what I need.”
That began to change when Greymont met Lebherz for the first time.
“It all comes down to time management and just believing in myself,” Greymont said. “Confidence is everything and I had nothing when I met Tom. Now I feel like I can go out and I’ll be OK.”
Lebherz said it’s all been worth it.
“It’s been a trying six years, but every year seems to get a little better,” Lebherz said.
