Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Brittany Tarrwater and I believe anything is possible.
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.
And this is Brittany Tarrwater. Thank you for being here today.
Thank you for having me my friend.
I feel like your family.
Same.
Right.
It's like, I know your family, you know me and I just am so happy that you're here today.
Well, we love you like family because you are.
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?
Oh, gosh.
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.
So I kind of think of like pre Knoxville and post Knoxville and there's a separation there.
Maybe it's the physical distance or just some changes in my life.
But I think about my family life and how I grew up.
And then I suppose there's a point of independence coming off to college and being out on your own.
And except for a small stint in Kentucky, I've been here ever since.
All right.
So let's, I guess we'll start at Knoxville and we'll work both sides of Knoxville.
Let's start at Knoxville and now let's go pre Knoxville.
Okay.
I grew up in Tampa, Florida, like really just outside of Tampa in a town called Palm Harbor.
So it's kind of close to the beach.
You have siblings?
I do.
I'm the oldest of three.
And we are very close in age.
So there are 14 months between my sister and me.
So I'm the oldest and then my sister and then about a year and a half after that is my brother.
So there's the three of us and my sister and I were always, I mean, as long as I can remember competitive swimmers.
Wow.
And so we are close in age and we are close in our relationship and we also just play the same sport.
So we were together all the time.
So you're swimming, you're swimming, you're swimming, you're doing life, you're underwater.
Oh yeah.
You had a goal to do what?
Swimming college.
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.
And my mom was a swimmer in college and then I, like I said, was a swimmer.
My sister was a swimmer and my brother was a very good hockey player.
When we were in high school, he moved away so he could play and live up north essentially.
So he lived in Detroit and Canada and lived with family.
So everyone in my family prioritized athletics and I was the least athletic out of everybody.
So I wanted to swim in college and I did desire to go somewhere that was not close to home.
But I wasn't a great swimmer.
I was a good swimmer but my sister was an exceptional swimmer.
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.
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.
So I had some, I was on some lists for being recruited but I was by no means a top recruit.
And so I had some trips and made some calls to some coaches and all that got washed away.
It was just canceled.
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.
He was coaching at Richmond but I didn't want to go to a small school.
I went to a small high school and I wanted to go to the SEC.
I mean that was, University of Georgia were the reigning national champions so I wanted to go compete in the SEC.
If I couldn't be the best swimmer, I wanted to be in the best conference and be competitive.
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.
The rest of them got canceled.
So I went to Richmond and I just adored him.
He was just everything that I could have wanted in a coach.
But I didn't want to go to school there.
It was just too small.
So I said, I'm sorry, I'm going to keep looking.
And then my mom and I got in the car and we drove north and we said,
we're going to go to as many schools as we can in a weekend or so.
And nobody knew we were coming.
We just popped on campus and we went to Georgia, we went to Florida.
We went to Kentucky, Louisville and just kind of bounced around within the region and we came through Tennessee.
And we didn't even get out of the car and I said, I'm going to school here.
I saw the stadium, we drove by the river.
We just walked on the pool deck.
Of course it was the Student Aquatic Center at that time that Alan Jones hadn't been built.
So I called the coach and I said, do you have room for somebody?
Can I?
And he was like, who are you?
But I committed.
I hadn't even met the team and I committed.
And then a few months later, Matt Kredich called and said, you know what?
If you're not coming to me, I'm coming to you.
And he was named the new head coach of the Lady Vols.
Wow.
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So you're here to University of Tennessee?
Yeah, I came to school on my 18th birthday.
And so what happened after that?
I remember diving in for my very first practice with the team.
We were, I haven't thought about this since then, but we were on the outside pool deck
and there were some optional practices before the official practices get started.
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
and the best swimmer that I can be.
And I may not be the best, but I wanted to be better than who I was
and I could leave some of my past behind.
And I dove in and everything changed.
And you said you could leave some of your past behind.
What were you trying to leave behind?
Yeah, I just, I had a complicated time between being in middle school and being in high school
and a lot of that I brought on myself, but I was immature.
I thought I was invincible.
I had a complicated relationship with my mom.
She had struggles that I was just too immature to realize and I didn't offer her grace.
And we struggled.
We argued and we just, we just struggled.
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
but the best school that we could go to and she was committed to getting us to swim practice
and she was committed to putting us in college, but we didn't have a lot of resources when I was grown up.
And my parents got divorced before I was going into high school.
So they lived on about an hour away from each other.
So that just added a layer of complexity.
Yeah, it's just getting, you're underwater.
Yeah.
Just a lot of breathe.
Yeah, I was.
My mom was not a believer.
At the time she was actually an atheist and that is the posture we grew up in.
That's how we grew up.
So you get to the University of Tennessee and you've decided, I'm going to swim my way out of this.
If I got to swim upstream, I'm going another way.
And so what happens as you dedicate yourself to being the best version of yourself?
I didn't realize it, but at the time in that point in my life swimming was a lifeline.
I could be whoever I wanted to be.
I didn't know anybody.
Nobody knew me.
So I thought I could create whatever I want.
And you did.
Tell me what you accomplished.
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.
And he just believed in me and pushed me and so did my team.
I never understood the true sense of team until I was around that level.
He really created a culture that was, we were all better than we thought we were.
What were you studying in school at the time?
I knew I wanted to get into reporting.
I thought at the time I want to be in sports broadcasting because my whole family, we'd grown up in athletics.
That was a really important piece of our lives.
So I wanted to be in sports broadcasting.
So I studied communication studies and I still wasn't immature at this point.
So I didn't really do things the right way.
But I studied communication studies with the intention of being in sports broadcasting.
I wanted to work on College Game Day.
One, two, three.
That's three in me right there.
That's all the same story.
So that's a little deceiving because they all came from one.
Three is three, right?
Three is three.
You find your way out of college.
You said sports reporting.
You wanted to be on College Game Day.
It's not over yet.
It's not over.
Yeah, if they're looking for like a middle-aged mom, I got you.
It's not over yet.
But you find your way into the world of broadcasting and you marry a swimmer.
I did.
I know.
So that's kind of funny with...
An Olympian no less.
He is exceptional.
He truly, I mean, he is, you know him.
That whole family is just...
Just exceptional.
But he was a good swimmer.
I still, his stroke was so efficient, so pretty to watch.
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.
So even when I was in high school, I remember watching him because they were such a powerhouse and he was worth watching.
So I remember watching him swim way before.
And I rooted for him because he was a Michigan man.
So just way before I ever knew him, I knew him long before he knew me.
So, but it's funny, we come back to Matt Kredich actually.
So he, Davis, in 2008 was a front runner.
And of course there was this guy named Michael Phelps who was also competing.
They trained together.
They're good friends.
So they trained together at this time at Michigan in 2008.
And this is not my story to tell, but he and Michael were projected to be first and second.
And Davis got third.
And they take top two.
So he came back home, which is Knoxville.
And that was my senior year.
And I remember having a meeting before morning practice on deck with Matt.
And Davis walked out of the visiting team locker room.
Slow motion.
It really did.
I remember that so vividly.
And he said, Davis Tarwater is going to train with us, which was unique because the programs were separate at the time.
So it was the women's team and here's this big name and a man coming to swim with us.
But he brought so much life and so much joy and laughter and perspective to the team.
That year, we all admired him.
And that was a really special season in part because of what he could bring to the team.
And the story is that after NCAA's, which ends my college eligibility, he asked Matt Kredige for permission to ask me out.
Are you blushing right now?
A little bit.
It's still the greatest story.
I love it.
I love everything about what just happened just then.
I am blushing.
So you guys get together and you start a family.
You start a career in television.
Yeah.
It was complicated before we got there, but you're right.
So I finished school and he actually, he came to Nationals with us because he was part of the team.
He was the volunteer assistant coach and he was training.
He truly, Helen was training because he had, of course, been devastated by missing the Olympic team.
But he had obligations with his sponsors to continue to swim.
So he swam in part to fulfill those obligations that he had to his contract.
But then he, so, but he was also on staff with us and he came to Nationals.
And he, I remember watching him get a phone call and his face changed when he got this phone call.
And he said, I've just been admitted to the University of Oxford for graduate school.
And at that time, we were not dating, but I knew I was going to marry him.
So I thought, well, are you going to go because that disrupts my plan.
So, and he said, he said back to me, when you get into Oxford, you go to Oxford.
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.
And we had started dating.
We started dating that summer or spring.
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.
So I was, we traveled across the country for that job.
And so I was doing that, working on that part of my career.
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.
And he came home after a year.
His program was one year long.
He came home and he said, I am not done with this sport.
I have a new perspective on this sport and I want to keep swimming.
All right.
He said, it's not going to be here.
So he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina and kept swimming as a professional.
And I went to grad school and I think it's an interesting part of the beginning of our relationship.
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.
Yes.
And that was really important to us because we both had pretty big goals.
And that culminated in 2012 when he made the Olympic team.
And it was also that same summer that I got my first job and was moving to Hazard, Kentucky.
But it was, then I moved to Kentucky for the next year and a half.
So you did.
And he was in Knoxville.
You develop your TV career.
Next thing I know, you're reporting and then you're on the anchor desk and then you do what to do this.
Oh, that had nothing to do with me.
I read about this story which was just a really unique part of Tennessee history that happened in the late 70s.
I read a book about it by Keele Hunt who lives in Nashville.
I thought, I have lived here for 15 years.
How do I not know what this story is?
And so I started asking some questions and it turns out a lot of the people around me didn't know either.
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.
So that is just because people said yes.
It was such a well-told story, obviously.
And I was really proud of somebody from our area, you know, and I know you're in love with storytelling.
I think though, you're such a great person.
You are too kind.
And watching you get there has been great because you had a full circle moment.
You married this great guy, you got kids, but your mother, that's a big piece of the journey.
Do you mind talking about that?
Because before Knoxville, after Knoxville, gold medals, Emmys, you know, it looks like the perfect life if you're looking from the outside.
You have had some real moments where you had to lean into your faith in God.
Talk about what happened between you and your mom if that's okay.
Oh, of course.
Of course.
Yeah, worst.
I did a really good job erasing from my memory everything that hurt.
And a lot of that was the relationship with my mom.
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.
Until very recently, I still hadn't forgiven what I thought I needed to forgive from her.
So I just wasted a lot of time being angry with her.
And right before Christmas last year, she got sick.
She got really sick.
And I flew in and I went to the hospital when my family told me I needed to come in with my sister.
And so I got to the hospital and I said, you know, it's serious when Brittany shows up.
And it was.
It was very serious.
It was stage four lung cancer.
And we didn't know if she had weeks or months or we didn't know.
So I spent more time going back home to visit her and I spent more time with her.
And most of our conversations for 35 years were pretty superficial.
But we started talking about my faith and she asked why I believed what I believed.
And I came home one time and she had a devotional on her desk and this was, her body was deteriorating.
And we started talking about it.
I asked her if she wanted to be baptized and she said I already was.
And then that was the last time I saw her.
And then she in August lost the ability to speak.
And I think when cancer patients sometimes I don't know the term but they kind of rally at the end.
She called me one day and she said.
Let's pause right there. Let's pause right there.