By Emma Foster, Swimming World College Intern
When Bethany Gehrke was just a few weeks old, she was hospitalized for an unknown illness. Her mother Barb Gehrke noticed that she was having intense coughing spells, so bad that she would stop breathing and begin to turn blue. Multiple trips to the doctor revealed nothing, until one day Barb marched into the doctor’s office and insisted that she wasn’t leaving until they did something to help her daughter.
A Crucial 12 Hours
Bethany had pneumonia. Worried, the doctor told Barb to take her right to the ER, and not to stop for any red lights. Barb flew to the hospital, where it was revealed that baby Bethany had developed whooping cough.
“Whooping cough is really bad because babies can’t get vaccines, so they don’t have any immunity,” Bethany, now a Seattle University senior explains. “I was in the ICU for a week, and I had the cough for a whole year. The doctor told my mom that if she had waited 12 hours to come to the ER, he didn’t think they would have been able to save me.”
Although she might have been too young to remember that week in the hospital, Bethany believes that it has shaped her fighting spirit.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she admits. “I just think that life is really precious and you don’t waste things because you never know what might happen.”
Fearless In Water
It was all thanks to a freak pool accident that Bethany brought her fighting spirit into the sport of swimming.
“When I was three or four, I was at the pool, and my uncle turned his back to me for a second. I got into water too deep too fast, and bobbed up and down for a couple minutes before a girl saved me.”
Photo Courtesy: Barb Gehrke
Bethany’s mom took that moment as a sign and registered for swim team to ensure her daughter would be a strong swimmer. The decision paid off, as Beth translated her tenacity in life into the pool.
Her club coach told her that she would be successful, because he could see the fire in her eyes. Bethany is known for setting goals and then making them happen no matter the circumstances. Whether it was the concussion she suffered from early in her college career, or the case of salmonella she experienced in the middle of her senior year, Bethany always came back fighting.
College Swimming
“I had to overcome a lot of obstacles and negativity when I had my concussion,” Beth said. “People told me that I would never be able to race at the same capacity again, and that I should quit.”
But Bethany didn’t quit. Instead, criticism just lit a fire within her. She has the attitude that if people don’t believe that she can do something, they can just “Watch me shine.” That attitude paid off in the last race of her career, at the WAC conference championship late last month.
Photo Courtesy: Barb Gehrke
She had a bit of a slow start in her meet and did not swim quite as fast as she had hoped in her middle-distance races. After talking to her coach, she found a renewed outlook.
“He told me to ‘swim for who you are’ and I think that’s where that fighting spirit came out and I was able to channel it in the mile.”
Bethany had a fantastic mile, earning the Redhawks an 8th place finish and re-breaking her own school record.
“That was my whole goal, that was what I was working for all season,” Bethany explains. “I knew the last 25 was going to be a fight to the end and I was going to go for it. When I took that last stroke I thought ‘this is really sad’ because I knew it was the last 25 in my career.”
Spreading Hope
While Bethany’s time as a college swimmer may have come to an end, she will carry that fighting spirit into her other passion: nursing. She attributes this passion to the nurse that she had as a baby in the hospital.
“I think that ultimately the nurse that took care of me is the reason I’m alive,” Beth says. “She made a bad situation good.”
Bethany wants to bring that same hope to families.
“I really want to be there for the families,” she explains. “I think I have that empathy and passion, and that drive with every family that walks through the door. I want to be able to instill that fighting spirit in all the families.”
Photo Courtesy: Barb Gehrke
Breaking records was her goal in the swimming world, bringing hope into every room will be her goal as a nurse.
She is sure to be busy with her nursing career, but Bethany still wants to find time to give back to the sport she loves. In fact, she just accepted a coaching job, where she will be working with kids at all different levels of their swimming careers. Her goal is to make the experience fun.
“I want to instill the passion for the sport. If you can make kids want to be there, they’re going to go far,” Beth says. “I want to help them achieve their goals no matter what they do.”
For someone who has fought for so much, Bethany is surely the right person for the job.