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Celebrating the power of possibility.

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I'm Brittany Tarrwater and I believe anything is possible.

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Welcome to anything is possible. I'm Halloran Hilton Hill and these are great stories about great people whose lives prove that anything is possible.

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And this is Brittany Tarrwater. Thank you for being here today.

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Thank you for having me my friend.

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I feel like your family.

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Same.

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Right.

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It's like, I know your family, you know me and I just am so happy that you're here today.

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Well, we love you like family because you are.

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When you tell your story and we'll get to these Emmys that are here, but when you tell your story, where do you start the telling of your story?

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Oh, gosh.

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To be honest, I see pieces of my life as past chapters and there's a kind of a linear person and the turning point happens when I came to Knoxville.

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So I kind of think of like pre Knoxville and post Knoxville and there's a separation there.

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Maybe it's the physical distance or just some changes in my life.

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But I think about my family life and how I grew up.

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And then I suppose there's a point of independence coming off to college and being out on your own.

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And except for a small stint in Kentucky, I've been here ever since.

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All right.

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So let's, I guess we'll start at Knoxville and we'll work both sides of Knoxville.

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Let's start at Knoxville and now let's go pre Knoxville.

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Okay.

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I grew up in Tampa, Florida, like really just outside of Tampa in a town called Palm Harbor.

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So it's kind of close to the beach.

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You have siblings?

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I do.

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I'm the oldest of three.

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And we are very close in age.

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So there are 14 months between my sister and me.

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So I'm the oldest and then my sister and then about a year and a half after that is my brother.

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So there's the three of us and my sister and I were always, I mean, as long as I can remember competitive swimmers.

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Wow.

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And so we are close in age and we are close in our relationship and we also just play the same sport.

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So we were together all the time.

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So you're swimming, you're swimming, you're swimming, you're doing life, you're underwater.

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Oh yeah.

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You had a goal to do what?

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Swimming college.

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And I, so in my household, my dad played football at the University of Michigan and he was a very, very good athlete, very accomplished.

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And my mom was a swimmer in college and then I, like I said, was a swimmer.

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My sister was a swimmer and my brother was a very good hockey player.

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When we were in high school, he moved away so he could play and live up north essentially.

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So he lived in Detroit and Canada and lived with family.

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So everyone in my family prioritized athletics and I was the least athletic out of everybody.

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So I wanted to swim in college and I did desire to go somewhere that was not close to home.

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But I wasn't a great swimmer.

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I was a good swimmer but my sister was an exceptional swimmer.

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So we, so I wanted to swim, she wanted to go to the Olympics and I wanted to go to college and swim in college.

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So when I was being recruited, which was 2004, the fall of 2004, there were several hurricanes that came through and a lot of my recruiting trips were canceled.

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So I had some, I was on some lists for being recruited but I was by no means a top recruit.

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And so I had some trips and made some calls to some coaches and all that got washed away.

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It was just canceled.

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So I took a recruiting trip with this coach who I really connected with when I was in high school and I knew he was great.

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He was coaching at Richmond but I didn't want to go to a small school.

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I went to a small high school and I wanted to go to the SEC.

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I mean that was, University of Georgia were the reigning national champions so I wanted to go compete in the SEC.

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If I couldn't be the best swimmer, I wanted to be in the best conference and be competitive.

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So Matt Kreditsch called me and invited me up for a trip and that was, I think it was the first one and it didn't get canceled.

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The rest of them got canceled.

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So I went to Richmond and I just adored him.

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He was just everything that I could have wanted in a coach.

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But I didn't want to go to school there.

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It was just too small.

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So I said, I'm sorry, I'm going to keep looking.

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And then my mom and I got in the car and we drove north and we said,

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we're going to go to as many schools as we can in a weekend or so.

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And nobody knew we were coming.

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We just popped on campus and we went to Georgia, we went to Florida.

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We went to Kentucky, Louisville and just kind of bounced around within the region and we came through Tennessee.

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And we didn't even get out of the car and I said, I'm going to school here.

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I saw the stadium, we drove by the river.

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We just walked on the pool deck.

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Of course it was the Student Aquatic Center at that time that Alan Jones hadn't been built.

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So I called the coach and I said, do you have room for somebody?

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Can I?

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And he was like, who are you?

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But I committed.

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I hadn't even met the team and I committed.

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And then a few months later, Matt Kredich called and said, you know what?

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If you're not coming to me, I'm coming to you.

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And he was named the new head coach of the Lady Vols.

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Wow.

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Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal and the Knoxville News Sentinel.

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So you're here to University of Tennessee?

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Yeah, I came to school on my 18th birthday.

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And so what happened after that?

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I remember diving in for my very first practice with the team.

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We were, I haven't thought about this since then, but we were on the outside pool deck

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and there were some optional practices before the official practices get started.

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And I remember before I dove in, I said, I'm going to make a commitment to be the best version of myself that I can be

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and the best swimmer that I can be.

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And I may not be the best, but I wanted to be better than who I was

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and I could leave some of my past behind.

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And I dove in and everything changed.

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And you said you could leave some of your past behind.

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What were you trying to leave behind?

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Yeah, I just, I had a complicated time between being in middle school and being in high school

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and a lot of that I brought on myself, but I was immature.

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I thought I was invincible.

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I had a complicated relationship with my mom.

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She had struggles that I was just too immature to realize and I didn't offer her grace.

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And we struggled.

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We argued and we just, we just struggled.

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I didn't see that she gave everything up to put my sister and put me in the best school that she could actually not afford

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but the best school that we could go to and she was committed to getting us to swim practice

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and she was committed to putting us in college, but we didn't have a lot of resources when I was grown up.

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And my parents got divorced before I was going into high school.

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So they lived on about an hour away from each other.

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So that just added a layer of complexity.

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Yeah, it's just getting, you're underwater.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Just a lot of breathe.

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Yeah, I was.

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My mom was not a believer.

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At the time she was actually an atheist and that is the posture we grew up in.

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That's how we grew up.

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So you get to the University of Tennessee and you've decided, I'm going to swim my way out of this.

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If I got to swim upstream, I'm going another way.

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And so what happens as you dedicate yourself to being the best version of yourself?

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I didn't realize it, but at the time in that point in my life swimming was a lifeline.

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I could be whoever I wanted to be.

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I didn't know anybody.

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Nobody knew me.

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So I thought I could create whatever I want.

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And you did.

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Tell me what you accomplished.

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I mean, I come back to my credit because he's just so steady and I mean, he is an incredible coach, but he is an even better man.

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And he just believed in me and pushed me and so did my team.

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I never understood the true sense of team until I was around that level.

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He really created a culture that was, we were all better than we thought we were.

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What were you studying in school at the time?

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I knew I wanted to get into reporting.

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I thought at the time I want to be in sports broadcasting because my whole family, we'd grown up in athletics.

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That was a really important piece of our lives.

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So I wanted to be in sports broadcasting.

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So I studied communication studies and I still wasn't immature at this point.

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So I didn't really do things the right way.

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But I studied communication studies with the intention of being in sports broadcasting.

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I wanted to work on College Game Day.

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One, two, three.

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One, two, three.

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That's three in me right there.

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That's all the same story.

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So that's a little deceiving because they all came from one.

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Three is three, right?

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Three is three.

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You find your way out of college.

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You said sports reporting.

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You wanted to be on College Game Day.

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It's not over yet.

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It's not over.

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Yeah, if they're looking for like a middle-aged mom, I got you.

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It's not over yet.

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But you find your way into the world of broadcasting and you marry a swimmer.

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I did.

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I know.

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I know.

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So that's kind of funny with...

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An Olympian no less.

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He is exceptional.

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He truly, I mean, he is, you know him.

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That whole family is just...

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Just exceptional.

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But he was a good swimmer.

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I still, his stroke was so efficient, so pretty to watch.

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I knew who he was for a long time because he swam at the University of Michigan and my dad played football at the University of Michigan.

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So even when I was in high school, I remember watching him because they were such a powerhouse and he was worth watching.

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So I remember watching him swim way before.

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And I rooted for him because he was a Michigan man.

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So just way before I ever knew him, I knew him long before he knew me.

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So, but it's funny, we come back to Matt Kredich actually.

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So he, Davis, in 2008 was a front runner.

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And of course there was this guy named Michael Phelps who was also competing.

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They trained together.

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They're good friends.

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So they trained together at this time at Michigan in 2008.

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And this is not my story to tell, but he and Michael were projected to be first and second.

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And Davis got third.

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And they take top two.

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So he came back home, which is Knoxville.

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And that was my senior year.

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And I remember having a meeting before morning practice on deck with Matt.

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And Davis walked out of the visiting team locker room.

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Slow motion.

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It really did.

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I remember that so vividly.

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And he said, Davis Tarwater is going to train with us, which was unique because the programs were separate at the time.

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So it was the women's team and here's this big name and a man coming to swim with us.

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But he brought so much life and so much joy and laughter and perspective to the team.

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That year, we all admired him.

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And that was a really special season in part because of what he could bring to the team.

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And the story is that after NCAA's, which ends my college eligibility, he asked Matt Kredige for permission to ask me out.

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Are you blushing right now?

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A little bit.

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It's still the greatest story.

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I love it.

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I love it.

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I love everything about what just happened just then.

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I am blushing.

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So you guys get together and you start a family.

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You start a career in television.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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It was complicated before we got there, but you're right.

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So I finished school and he actually, he came to Nationals with us because he was part of the team.

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He was the volunteer assistant coach and he was training.

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He truly, Helen was training because he had, of course, been devastated by missing the Olympic team.

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But he had obligations with his sponsors to continue to swim.

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So he swam in part to fulfill those obligations that he had to his contract.

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But then he, so, but he was also on staff with us and he came to Nationals.

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And he, I remember watching him get a phone call and his face changed when he got this phone call.

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And he said, I've just been admitted to the University of Oxford for graduate school.

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And at that time, we were not dating, but I knew I was going to marry him.

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So I thought, well, are you going to go because that disrupts my plan.

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So, and he said, he said back to me, when you get into Oxford, you go to Oxford.

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So he swam for the remainder of the summer, but then in August, he moved to England and he did his master's degree there.

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And we had started dating.

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We started dating that summer or spring.

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So, so he moved across, across the pond and I stayed and I had my first job and I was a sideline reporter in my first job.

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So I was, we traveled across the country for that job.

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And so I was doing that, working on that part of my career.

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He was overseas getting his master's degree and we were, I mean, we're not even on the same time zone, just ships in the night.

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And he came home after a year.

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His program was one year long.

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He came home and he said, I am not done with this sport.

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I have a new perspective on this sport and I want to keep swimming.

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All right.

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He said, it's not going to be here.

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So he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina and kept swimming as a professional.

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And I went to grad school and I think it's an interesting part of the beginning of our relationship.

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And I'm so glad that it happened, the timing happened when it did because we were able to fulfill our dreams individually but together.

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Yes.

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And that was really important to us because we both had pretty big goals.

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And that culminated in 2012 when he made the Olympic team.

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And it was also that same summer that I got my first job and was moving to Hazard, Kentucky.

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But it was, then I moved to Kentucky for the next year and a half.

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So you did.

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And he was in Knoxville.

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You develop your TV career.

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Next thing I know, you're reporting and then you're on the anchor desk and then you do what to do this.

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Oh, that had nothing to do with me.

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I read about this story which was just a really unique part of Tennessee history that happened in the late 70s.

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I read a book about it by Keele Hunt who lives in Nashville.

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I thought, I have lived here for 15 years.

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How do I not know what this story is?

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And so I started asking some questions and it turns out a lot of the people around me didn't know either.

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So that's when I, well, your spidey sense kind of goes off and you think, well, maybe I'm on to a story here.

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So that is just because people said yes.

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It was such a well-told story, obviously.

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And I was really proud of somebody from our area, you know, and I know you're in love with storytelling.

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I think though, you're such a great person.

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You are too kind.

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And watching you get there has been great because you had a full circle moment.

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You married this great guy, you got kids, but your mother, that's a big piece of the journey.

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Do you mind talking about that?

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Because before Knoxville, after Knoxville, gold medals, Emmys, you know, it looks like the perfect life if you're looking from the outside.

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You have had some real moments where you had to lean into your faith in God.

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Talk about what happened between you and your mom if that's okay.

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Oh, of course.

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Of course.

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Yeah, worst.

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I did a really good job erasing from my memory everything that hurt.

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And a lot of that was the relationship with my mom.

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And I did that even as an adult and even as a mother, which I mean, hasn't been, I have a four-year-old and that's been a two-year-old, but so it hasn't been that long.

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Until very recently, I still hadn't forgiven what I thought I needed to forgive from her.

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So I just wasted a lot of time being angry with her.

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And right before Christmas last year, she got sick.

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She got really sick.

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And I flew in and I went to the hospital when my family told me I needed to come in with my sister.

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And so I got to the hospital and I said, you know, it's serious when Brittany shows up.

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And it was.

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It was very serious.

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It was stage four lung cancer.

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And we didn't know if she had weeks or months or we didn't know.

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So I spent more time going back home to visit her and I spent more time with her.

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And most of our conversations for 35 years were pretty superficial.

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But we started talking about my faith and she asked why I believed what I believed.

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And I came home one time and she had a devotional on her desk and this was, her body was deteriorating.

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And we started talking about it.

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I asked her if she wanted to be baptized and she said I already was.

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And then that was the last time I saw her.

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And then she in August lost the ability to speak.

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And I think when cancer patients sometimes I don't know the term but they kind of rally at the end.

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She called me one day and she said.

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Let's pause right there. Let's pause right there.