Fight Until the Battle is Won: Erica Esterly’s 28-Mile Swim
WEST POINT, N.Y. – It is said that for Cadets at the United States Military Academy, competing on the fields of friendly strife provides first-hand experience at preparing to win on the battlefield. Through athletics, Cadets are given a chance to learn about tenacity, resilience, discipline, mental and physical toughness and the desire to excel.
When the ‘field’ is a 28-mile swim around the island of Manhattan and the ‘competition’ pits yourself against the ever-changing currents and conditions of open water for over an eight-hour span, those attributes and ideas are put to the test.
For Erica Esterly, a yearling on the Army West Point swimming and diving team, the character traits that have been instilled in her through her time at the Academy helped her win on the battlefield that was the 20 Bridges Swim, which she completed in September. The former Arizona Open Water Distance Swimmer of the Year was one of just two people to complete the mission that day, as four other competitors dropped out.
This particular swim has been years in the making for Esterly, who has been racing in open water competitions since she was 13 years old. Born in Philadelphia, she would return to the area annually to visit family and it was there that she first competed in the Mid-Atlantic Championship. The competition, five kilometers long, sparked a fire in her that has only grown over time.
I had run 5Ks prior to that point, but swimming it was a totally different beast … But I swam it and I absolutely loved it and from that point I was hooked. I was like, ‘I want to open water swim as much as I can.'
Though she continued to find open water challenges over the next few years, her passion for it started to drift towards the backburner as she began the collegiate recruitment process. The daughter of a former Marine, Esterly knew that she wanted to serve from a very young age. With that in mind, Army began to stand out for its opportunities to compete at a high level collegiately and serve her country.
“I looked at a bunch of different schools and took trips to them, but when I came here I just fell in love with the team," Esterly said. "I loved the campus and going to classes. The biggest things that made my decision were the swim team and seeing what I could do after West Point with how many opportunities there are in the Army.”
Esterly’s passion and commitment to attending West Point allowed her to fall into the lap of head coach Brandt Nigro, who took over the reins of the Black Knights’ swimming and diving program the summer heading into her plebe year. After receiving her Letter of Assurance in August of 2019, she reached out to Nigro and the two clicked right away.
“He’s been awesome," she added. "He’s not my stroke coach, but we have been pretty close, especially when I started doing my open water stuff. He’s been really supportive the whole time.”
After committing to swim for West Point, Esterly began her return to open water swimming. Once she knew she would be attending school in New York, she searched for opportunities to compete and eventually found the 20 Bridges Swim.
“My friend from Arizona did it two years ago," Esterley shared. "I’ve always thought about doing the [English] Channel, so that’s been on my mind for a couple of years. This was the perfect time to get started if I want to make marathon swimming a thing for me … I was trying to find the race itself when I saw the application for it. I put one in, but I wasn’t sure if I’d get in because I hadn’t done anything officially over a 5K before. I used [an 18K] that I swam last spring during quarantine for fun on my 18th birthday … I talked about that on my application and how I’ve done a lot of 5Ks and stuff and then I got accepted to swim in January. From then, I kind of just focused on finishing out the college season in the spring. After that, I talked with my coaches about trying to train in the Hudson and then what my training would look like in the summer to prepare me for it.”
When Esterly’s application was accepted, Nigro immediately helped her get in contact with Jen Schumacher, a Performance Psychology Instructor at the Center for Enhanced Performance (CEP) at West Point. One of many performance psychologists available to cadet-athletes at the Academy, Schumacher swam the English Channel over the summer and was able to provide some key insight and training input for Esterly. The knowledgeable tandem of Schumacher and Nigro helped the young swimmer prepare for spring and summer training and set her up to swim in the Hudson River.
“[Over the summer], I started with an hour swim in the lake and then did two hours, three hours, four hours, five hours," Esterly said. "I would put snacks in my buoy and simulate feeding every 30 minutes because obviously I didn’t have a kayaker. Here [at West Point], I go down to South Dock and there’s a very small little beach entrance where you walk out … I walk in there and always have a buoy around my waist because there are massive ships that go in and out … It’s fun. A lot of times, I go when it’s warm obviously, I’ll see people sitting on the rocks and I’ll wave at them. That’s my favorite thing to do here because it’s such a cool view from Trophy Point like looking down on the river but being able to actually be in the water and see the mountains is cool.”
During her training, Esterly was putting in about 25-30 miles a week and focusing on improving her freestyle technique on top of preparing for the collegiate season. There were times when she struggled with her training due to some nagging shoulder and elbow injuries, but she was committed to her goal. Lake swims in her home state of Arizona and solo excursions in the Hudson, all part of Nigro and Schumacher’s plan, had her ready for the early morning call on race day.
After waking up at 7 a.m., Esterly, Schumacher and Rich Salhus – her stroke coach at Army – headed down to the Village Community Boathouse. Salhus was able to see his swimmer off before she hopped on a boat with Schumacher and an official. Esterly was brought out to the pier and eventually dropped in the water at 9 a.m. alongside just one other swimmer.
With 28 miles between her and the finish line, Esterly’s resilience was tested off the bat. After going under the Brooklyn Bridge, the first of the day, she was forced to swim against the current in cold and rainy conditions. Following the initial leg, she was dumped into an area referred to as “Hell’s Gate”, which is where the Harlem and East Rivers converge. The meeting of the two rivers created a whirlpool effect, which Esterly says she remembers wanting to swim out of as fast as possible.
“I was in the Harlem River until about the four-, four-and-a-half-hour mark," she said. "That was the hardest part for me mentally as well because I was cruising, I was fine, but I’ve had shoulder issues in the past. My elbows, especially my right elbow, tend to start hurting about two to three hours into a swim. I was anticipating that pain, which kind of made it worse because I knew right at that Harlem River stretch is when it started to hurt. That was the hardest part mentally as well because I was like ‘I’m almost halfway, but then I have to do all four hours again’.”
Esterly’s determination to finish the race helped her block out most of the pain. Prior to getting in the water, she had worked out a plan with her kayaker to take some ibuprofen around the three-hour mark, which also helped. Additionally, Shumacher was able to “support swim” with Esterly for 30 minutes, which she did during the Harlem River stretch. Having that extra presence in the water, as well as landmarks along the course, helped her push through the swim’s challenging middle.
“Before the race, I made up my mind that I was going to finish this, and I don’t care if it takes me 20 hours and I have to kick my way in," she said. "I’m going to finish it. I might as well make up my mind and numb the pain out as much as I can … It also helps being able to watch all of New York City going by, too. It took my mind off the pain. And then at about halfway once I had come around the island, I was really motivated. I thought, ‘I’m going to finish this, I’m going to bring it home.’”
For the back half of her day, Esterly says that she was focused on the George Washington Bridge, which she could see for about two hours. Though at first it seemed to have a mirage effect, she eventually backstroked under the 4,760-foot suspension bridge, which was where she saw her parents, who had flown in to support their daughter. They were the only other people that she saw all day, other than Schumacher, her support kayaker and the boat official, who was responsible for recording her time and made sure that she did not touch the boat or receive any form of physical support.
With the George Washington Bridge behind her, Esterly was in the home stretch and had just 90 minutes to go. As she closed in, she saw the New York skyline, populated by big skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty. She said that the size of the buildings and the gravitas of the skyline as the sun set gave the last few strokes of her eight-hour swim an almost ethereal feel to them. When she finally hit the finish line, Esterly was met with all sorts of different thoughts.
“I probably could’ve kept going, physically I was fine," Esterly said. "But mentally I was like ‘I am done. I need to be done.’ You kind of lose sense of reality, even if it’s a two-hour swim. You lose sense of time. It’s just you in the water, you’re disconnected from the world, you don’t have your phone, no music. I don’t see or talk to people. I’m not hearing other people speak. When you’re running, you can see people and talk to people. But this, you can’t stop swimming … That’s part of the reason why I like it so much. It disconnects me from everything that’s on my mind and stressors. It’s whatever I want to think about in that time. But that’s also why it makes it such a weird experience. I started the race at 9 a.m. and … I swam the whole day … Marathon swimming as physical as it is, it’s much more about being in the right headspace. There’s a lot of times when you could quickly go to a bad place thinking about how your shoulder hurts, but you have to fight that. Think to yourself, ‘I’m not going down that path right now.’”
When asked how she stayed in the right headspace for one of the biggest physical challenges of her life, Esterly awarded credit to the classes that she’s taken as a philosophy major, the character instilled in her by the Academy and her time with the swimming & diving team.
“A lot of it [staying tough during the swim] is about resiliency,” she added. “That’s a buzz word that’s thrown around a lot, but I think it’s definitely prepared me. Especially my time on the team has prepared me to be in a position where me finishing or not finishing is up to the decision I make. It’s all very much dependent on how tough I am, but more so how bad I want it. Part of it too is the days here are long days. You wake up at 5 a.m., I don’t get back to my room until like 9 p.m. I’m always on my feet, going from practice to school to afternoon practice again. So, I think part of that helped me prepare for being tired for a long stretch of time but being able to push through it. Also, a lot of the stuff we’ve done in swim. We talk a lot about having grit and having resiliency. When you get to that point when you think you have nothing else, then you figure out how to go from there.”
With the race completed, Esterly said she was focused on two things: pasta and a shower. After getting out of the water, she took some photos, received her medal and FaceTimed her siblings and friends. She went back to the hotel, took what she says was the longest shower of her life, put on sweatpants and ate fettuccini alfredo. Now, she’s focused on competing with the Cadets during the collegiate season.
“My goal is to maintain [my aerobic base] and kind of work on translating that because obviously my marathon speed and my speed in the 500 Free are worlds apart," Esterly said. "Figuring out how I can focus on speed work but still keep that endurance base … The funny thing is that before I would be like ‘a two-hour practice is a long time’ and now I’m like ‘this is fine’. It does not even phase me anymore being in the water for long periods of time. It is funny because sometimes I’ll be like, I could probably outswim the people next to me [in a race] but the question is can I be at their speed. I don’t know, there’s still a lot that I have to work on in the water. Getting faster and figuring out how to make my stroke better so my shoulder and elbows don’t hurt.”
In addition to competing with the Black Knights, Esterly is focused on developing as a leader and as a teammate in her second year as a Cadet. She feels that, as a yearling, she is responsible for the team’s culture and is looking forward to figuring out where she fits in as an upperclassman. Esterly has been putting a lot of thought into how she wants to be seen by her peers and said, “there’s a lot more emphasis this year to not just be a good swimmer in the water but be a good teammate on the deck as well.”
When asked about her future in open water swimming, Esterly smiled and said three words: “The English Channel”. The 21-mile course is curved and known for its choppy, cold water. It’s also filled with jellyfish, which have been known to sting swimmers attempting its completion.
“It’s good to have a goal that completely terrifies you," she said. "When I was first applying for the [20 Bridges] swim, I thought the concept of being in the water for 28 miles was very scary. Even leading up to the race, the day of, I was like ‘I’m not comfortable. This isn’t a comfortable space for me.’ But that’s what makes it so rewarding afterwards. Where I’ve found the most growth and personal character development is finding things that make me absolutely scared … One thing that one of the CEP coaches said during a lesson was to set yourself up for heartbreak. Put everything on the line so that even if you fail, you can come out of it with the reassurance that you did everything in your power. So even if I fail at these big goals, at least I can know that I put everything into it. And I can try again.”
Esterly will do just that. Whether it’s swimming the mile (1650 Free) at a Patriot League Championship, staring down the English Channel, or serving her country on a battlefield, there’s no doubt that she is prepared to accomplish the mission and win.
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