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What you said is whether it is one we have built for our business or excuse me, whether

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it is one we have built for a business or one we have cultivated for ourselves, our

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families, our friends, and our communities are how we make sense of life, share our

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experiences and engage with others in a meaningful way.

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One of the stories that obviously really touched me was you spoke about the

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loss of one of your swimmers and how the community, it was more than just

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you sharing the news.

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You, well, I mean, I'll let you speak on that.

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Would you like to speak on that a little bit?

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Yeah, no, I don't mind.

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I use that as an example in my book.

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It was, so Vance Sanders, who was a rising star, often compared to

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Michael Phelps or Caleb Dressel and a standout swimmer, 15 years old.

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And when we were broadcasting the meets, we would see these kids over and

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over and over at the different meets.

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We were doing, you know, two and three meets a weekend.

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We would see them, we would interview them because we treated them like rock stars.

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We'd be down doing the one-on-one interviews with them.

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So we got to know a lot of the kids, the coaches and the teams very well.

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And Vance, unfortunately, shot himself one day after swim practice.

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He got very upset.

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His little brother found him and we got a phone call from his coach,

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Randy Reese, former Olympic coach.

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He called up my husband, Joe, and said, I need you guys to spread this news before

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rumors start going and everything else.

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So he was asking Florida Swim Network to craft the news and spread it.

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And so I sat down to write that and it was first very heartbreaking to us,

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as it would be for anybody's, you know, a child that you know.

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Life lost senselessly way too early.

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And the manner, the fact that it was a suicide made it very difficult to write about.

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And then I knew that many of the teams and many of the swimmers that knew him,

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and many of the parents that knew him would be hearing about it the first time

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from us, from what we wrote about it.

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And so I really felt honored that we were asked to do that.

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That our community trusted us enough to do it in a very sensitive

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way versus sensationalized way.

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But it really was one of the hardest things I've ever written.

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You know, I wrote it and kept rewriting it and rewriting it.

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And I, you know, I guess we did a good enough job that, you know, sensitive at

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the same time, you know, conveyed the loss and what a tragedy it was that I later

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found out that his mother actually used that blog post to send to her friends and

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family to let them also know about the news.

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So if you can build community in a way that trusts you to do the right thing

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and to, you know, deliver for them and be there in times of need for them, then

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that's another key component as a community builder.

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It's our obligation.

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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And I mean, the thing that stood out to me so much about that story is that

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you really did build a family.

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You built people that were not just people you saw at swim meets.

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They weren't just the parents you spoke to.

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It was truly a community that you could talk to about everything.