By Candice Peak
MADISON, Wisconsin, April 21. LOSING a person before their time is a situation that people have an extremely difficult time dealing with. One team, however, has taken a horrible accident and turned it into a time of reflection and positive memories. On Feb. 20, 2010, 16-year-old Natalie Bolin died in a car accident coming back from the Wisconsin Boys High School State Meet. That wreck also injured the three other girls in the car, including her younger sister Leah. Natalie was a swimmer on the Oshkosh YMCA Swim Team and her team and coaches have refused to allow Natalie's death to be the defining moment of her life, when she was a girl who was all about living.
Natalie's head coach at the Oshkosh YMCA, Jay Coleman, has taken a tragedy that would normally break people down and has made it into an opportunity for her teammates and coaches to become stronger.
"Just because this is difficult, doesn't mean that this isn't going to make us stronger people," Coleman says.
Coleman believes the hardest thing to do in the wake of a difficult situation is to be by yourself, so he has made sure, along with the Bolin family, that there have been places for people to come together to celebrate Natalie's life and remember her as a positive and life-loving teenager.
Coleman and the Oshkosh YMCA Swim Team held a practice shortly after Natalie's death, inviting all the teams in the area to attend, in order to come together and provide a time for reflection. The swimmers did the last two sets Natalie had done before she died, while thinking about her. Coleman said it was "very emotional" and many swimmers ended the set "in tears". After they finished swimming, they spent time as group telling stories about team trips and events that they had spent with Natalie.
Oshkosh YMCA also had a small meet with the younger swimmers at their home pool and they all wore Natalie Bolin tattoos when they raced. The Wisconsin 12-and-under state meet also occurred the following weekend and each swimmer wore a team cap that said "National Team" on the side to remember Natalie since she was a member of Oshkosh's National Team. Coleman says they all swam great and put up wonderful times because "they swam inspired." They had a purpose every time they got up to race on the block: they were racing in remembrance of their teammate.
On Saturday, one week after the accident was Natalie's 17th birthday. Natalie's favorite race was the 500, so Coleman decided the team would do a set in honor of Natalie's birthday. The set was 17 x 500s, 17 for her age, and 500 being her favorite race. According to Coleman, her goal for the past few years has been to break the five-minute mark in that race, a goal that would remain unmet. So, Coleman challenged her teammates to do it for her. On the 17th 500, Coleman pulled his swimmers out of the water and told all of them to try to break 5 minutes for Natalie. After a long, exhausting set, one of her teammates was able to complete the challenge. Fifteen-year-old Jack Iotte finished the last 500 in a 4:58 and had met Natalie's goal for her.
How Natalie was as a person is a guide for how her family and friends are dealing with her death and Coleman has also found inspiration from Natalie's mother, Mary Jo Bolin.
Coleman has known parents who have lost children and many parents choose to mourn their child's death in a closed-off way, away from others in order to deal with such a difficult loss.
"Mary Jo (Natalie's mother) is not a shell," Coleman says.
Like her daughter, Mrs. Bolin is a positive type of person. After the Saturday practice on Natalie's 17th birthday, Mrs. Bolin insisted the team come to their home and celebrate Natalie's birthday by remembering her and eating the last breakfast she had eaten before the accident. Coleman says there were around 50 people in the Bolin household that Saturday. Again, showing the overwhelming love and respect her teammates and friends had for her.
Natalie Bolin was a life-loving, positive thinking 16-year-old girl who would not want her family and friends looking at the negative side of her passing.
"Looking at the negative side of things, that wasn't who she was" Coleman says, "And, the best way to remember someone who loved life is to live and never stop."