BEACHWOOD, Ohio — A high school athlete in Beachwood isn’t letting the pandemic keep him from achieving his goals. And what he has set up in his home takes the idea of staying in shape to another level.
- Grady Bystrom has a YouTube video that shows just how seriously he takes his desire to swim in college
- With the shutdown of pools after the coronavirus outbreak, he was stuck with only the dry land workouts in the basement of his home
- Bystrom created the G-Dizzle Natatorium in his family's garage
What You Need To Know
"If everything was open, I would be training, swimming five times a week, and then doing dryland lifting, other things," said Bystrom. "I saw it on Instagram about five to six weeks ago. I thought, ‘oh, I can do that!'"
Bystrom used his college savings to buy, build, and insulate the 2,700-gallon pool. He uses a car jack and stretch cord to attach to his waist and swim away.
The homemade natatorium also has a lifeguard. It's usually his brother, Spencer, a college diver.
"It was kind of out of the blue. He said he was going to get the pool off Amazon with his college savings and build it in the garage. And originally, I thought ‘yeah, this is just another one of those ideas that’s kind of just going to end up not working out,’ but a few days later he told me the pool was here and he needed help building it," said Spencer.
This was a surprise to some, but not so much for his swim coach.
"Well, knowing Grady and the Bystrom family, truly not out of the realm of being surprised. I guess what really hit me was his extreme motivation to get back in the pool," said Brad Burget, head coach of the Beachwood Bison Swim Club. "The fact that he used his college money just to do it, I mean, he is the team leader. And it really just kind of just puts the exclamation point on it right there."
For Bystrom, this is something he felt he needed to do to make that next lap in his athletic career.
"I know that I want to swim in college, that I still need to get better, get faster, and I’m not going to let this pandemic stop me from achieving my goals," he said.