I had been swimming competitively for about fiveyears and was ready to quit, not becanse I had satisfied mydesire to swim, but because I felt I was horrible at it. I wasoften the only African American at a swim competition,and our team could not afford anything close to the greatuniforms the other teams were wearing. Worst of allthough, and my number one reason for wanting to quit,was that I kept receiving “Honorable Mentions” at eachcompetition, which simply means, “Thank you for com-ing. You did not even rank first, second or third, but wedon't want you to go home with nothing, so here issomething to hide later.” Any athlete knows that youdon' t want to have a bookshelf or a photo album full of“Honorable Mentions”. They call that the “show-up rib-bon” ; you get one just because you showed up.