Today, I had the opportunity to go to Laguna Hills Beach and swim with dolphins! It was an incredible experience I could never forget!

I swim competitively for a team called Evolution, and every Saturday, our team picks a specific beach to swim at and have fun. Usually, I hate morning practice because I have to wake up early, but today, my sister convinced me to go saying, “it will be a fun experience!”.

At first, I thought “yeah, sure it will”, but as soon as we started warming up I couldn’t help but keep staring at the sea and seeing fins pop up and out of the water and quickly go back under the waves. I was startled, because at first I thought it was a shark, but I soon realized sharks don’t surface to breathe very often, and soon came to a conclusion that they were dolphins!

Everyone on my swim team was talking and were excited to see the dolphins, but not me. They were swimming awfully close to the beach, and I heard from someone once that dolphins liked to swim near people, and could bite you. Because of this, I was thinking about not swimming at all. But my coach kept telling me that dolphins won’t bother you unless you bother them. I started calming down, so I ran into the waves and started swimming.

We had to swim past 3 buoys in the water, which was around 1000 yards, since we also had to swim back to the sand. Just my luck that I went in late that day, and I was the last person swimming, trying to catch up with the group. I was swimming for a good 5 minutes when suddenly, a huge figure popped out of the water and I was on the verge of screaming. It was a dolphin, and as soon as it appeared, it disappeared under the waves. That dolphin was HUGE! It was so close I could almost touch it! I was fearful, and started sprinting to catch up with the group. My heart beat was extremely high, and every thought in my head was “catch up with the group, get back to shore”. After about 5 minutes, I was so close to catching up with the group, almost 20 meters, until I took a breath and looked down. Something was moving below me and I was so terrified! I finally managed to catch up with the group, dead last and shaking.

Today was a day I definitely wouldn’t forget!

-Alia Charles, 8th grade