TSV Hohenbrun-Riemerling: Teresa Baerens celebrates comeback with the sharks.
Hohenbrunn-Riemerling – Teresa Baerens (25) is one of the most successful swimmers at TSV Hohenbrunn-Riemerling. She won many medals at national championships and at the European Youth Championships the gold medal with the 4 x 100 meter crawl relay. In 2013, the crawl specialist went to the USA to study and continued her swimming career at the University of Nevada. Since last September she has been on the Riemerlinger Sharks again.
Teresa Baerens started her career in 2003 in Riemerling. In spite of all the successes that she was able to celebrate, she especially remembered the training camp. She says: “We always had a lot of fun as a team and every time I think about the training camps, I have to laugh again. We all got on very well. ”
And further: "Of course it is also very nice to be able to celebrate success and to know that all the hard work in the water and on land pays off." And Teresa Baerens has some successes to show. Tesi, as everyone calls her, says: "It was a special moment for me when I qualified for the 2010 European Youth Championships." In Helsinki, she won the gold medal with the 4 x 100 meter crawl relay and also started over 100 meters of crawl and 200 meters of positions. The 25-year-old looks back: "I am very proud that I managed to be among the best young people in Germany."
In addition to her various individual successes - she was a multiple Bavarian and South German champion and won medals at the German championships - she also won several relay medals with the Riemerlinger Haien in national title fights and was promoted to the First Bundesliga by the German team swimming. And she fondly remembers that: “The climb was really cool! We were all so proud and just so happy that we made it. ”
In the summer of 2013, the crawl and position swimmer decided to accept a sports scholarship from the University of Nevada and continue her career in the USA and study mechanical engineering there. She moved to Nevada, near Lake Tahoe, and continued her success there: Among other things, she qualified twice for NCAA - a university competition for which only 30 to 40 swimmers from all over America qualified on each course. She celebrated various victories on her parade course 200 meters crawl and still holds the university record over the course. Her memory of her first conference success over 200 meters crawl is particularly memorable: “That was very important to me because it hadn't gone so well before. That's how it is sometimes as an athlete that things don't just go uphill. Then I was all the more pleased that it worked so well in my first year in America. “Because she had to get used to some changes there: she trained under a new trainer, in a new team and had to get used to find your way around a new environment. Baerens says: “In the USA, I learned a lot about training morale and did my best. Although nobody can do it anymore and everyone is finished with the hard training, everyone is fighting their way through and that is really a cool training atmosphere. ”
In addition, the timetable was adapted to the training in the USA, so that she did not have to miss a training session and could complete her nine water sessions and several sessions on land. But the biggest difference, she says, is that swimming is more of a team sport in the United States. This is of course also due to the university system. Because at university competitions you always swim for the team, everyone collects points and in the end the university with the most points wins. “It was always important for me to swim in good times. But in the end, the only thing that matters at university competitions is that you win. The placement determines what you get for a score, ”says Barens. Most competitions in the United States only last around two hours. But after that you were very broken because you had to swim several distances in a short time.
In 2017 - after four years - her time at the University of Nevada ended and she gave up her swimming gear for the time being. The 25-year-old had decided to stay in America for another two years and got a work visa. But she just couldn't let the swimming go and she hadn't finished with it yet. The mechanical engineering graduate says: “I always jumped into the water. There were times when I did it more often and then I swam less often. ”
Last September she returned from the USA to her home town of Ottobrunn and is now swimming for the Riemerlinger Haie again. The 25-year-old says: "I mainly started again here because my sister had said that she would like to do DMS (German team swimming) again for Riemerling and then I thought: 'Okay, then I'll try it too."
Since November she has been training in the water three to five times a week and doing two to three units on land. She says: “The training entry worked great and I got back in really quickly. The body does not seem to forget how to swim. ”So at DMS she swam close to her best times and was the hardest-working point collector of the Riemerlinger Haie. The crawl specialist explains: “Then I thought that as long as things go so well I can go on. For example, I really want to swim at the German Short Course Championships. ”
But the most important thing for her is that she continues to have fun swimming. And one thing would have changed in the meantime: her favorite route. “Although I celebrated most of my successes over 200 meters of crawl, I always preferred to swim in the 200 meters. But now I prefer to swim the 100 meter crawl, because the track is just a bit shorter and I don't train as much as before, ”said the 25-year-old.
In the meantime, Teresa Barens is also keeping fit otherwise, for example, she likes to go hiking or surfing. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, she currently has to put these hobbies on hold. Fortunately, the 25-year-old is also very musically talented and you can also make music very well at home.
