EXCLUSIVE – What a difference a year makes. Swimmer Maya Gördüemel was left devastated when red tape prevented her from a coveted place on the Turkish SEM programme. Today, it’s been officially announced she has officially been selected – and thought to be one of the first in Didim sporting history!

Last year, Didim Voices reported how Maya had travelled to Antalya with her coach and raced against the clock to achieve the required swimming standards for Türkiye’s Sporcu Eğitim Merkezleri (SEM) programme.

The 12-year-old succeeded in the pool, achieving the required times and earning the opportunity, on sporting merit, to apply. But there was a problem nobody anticipated. At the time, Aydın was not among the provinces open for swimming SEM applications.

With her family discovering that she could not proceed with an application simply because of where she lived and attended school, the disappointment hit the young swimmer hard.

For a while, she even questioned whether she wanted to continue swimming. But she did. She got back into the pool, continued training and competing and, over the following year, kept working towards the same goal.

Situation changes

This year, the situation changed. Aydın swimmers were able to apply for SEM and finally giving Maya the opportunity. Once again, she had to prove herself in the pool and achieve the required swimming standards. Once again, she did.

Then came the long wait. Achieving the required standards does not automatically guarantee a SEM place, with only a proportion of eligible young athletes ultimately selected.

On October 1, after weeks of waiting, the news finally arrived. Maya had officially been selected for SEM. She is among 656 young athletes aged 11–18 selected across Türkiye and one of only four children of her age selected from Aydın.

But for Didim, her achievement carries an additional significance. Maya is believed to be the first swimmer from Didim — boy or girl, across any age category — ever to achieve SEM selection.

It is a milestone made even more remarkable by the circumstances in which she trains. Unlike swimmers based in many of Türkiye’s larger cities, Maya does not have an Olympic-size 50-metre training pool on her doorstep.

Her progress has been built through years of local training, travelling to competitions and taking every opportunity available to gain experience in larger pools.

Her mum Samantha said that although Maya’s name appears on the result, the achievement belongs to a much wider group of people who have supported her journey. Centre to that is Ege Yükselen Spor Kulübü, its head coach Ali Turan, and the club’s entire coaching team.

Major support

She said: “We simply couldn’t have done this without all of Maya’s coaches at Ege Yükselen and especially her head coach, Ali Turan. There are so many hours of work that people never see.

“Her coaches don’t just turn up for a race. They are there through the early mornings, difficult training sessions, disappointments and all the days when a swimmer is tired but still has to keep going.

“Maya’s achievement is also an achievement for her coaches and her team.”

Ali Turan summed up the philosophy of the Didim club: “We are not a big team, but we have big hearts and big ambitions. My swimmers work incredibly hard and our coaching team goes above and beyond for them. Results like this make all of that hard work worthwhile.

“We hope Maya’s achievement will encourage more and more children to come and swim with us, work hard and see what is possible.”

Maya’s family also thanked American Kültür Koleji, which has supported the young swimmer by allowing her to train in the school’s pool and helping accommodate the demands of competitive swimming alongside her education.

Samantha said: “People see the races and the medals, but they don’t always see everything that has to happen behind the scenes for a child to compete at this level. Maya still has schoolwork, lessons and exams like every other child.”

Only the beginning

Support has also come from Didim’s local expatriate community, friends and family, many of whom have donated swimming and sporting equipment to the team. She added: “Swimming can be an expensive sport, particularly as children progress and need equipment and have to travel more frequently. Our friends, family and members of the local expat community have been incredibly generous. Those gestures might seem small to somebody on the outside, but to us they mean a great deal.”

She also paid tribute to Maya’s physiotherapist, Burak Sevilen, who has helped her deal with tired and overworked muscles that inevitably come with an increasingly demanding training programme.

Sports psychologist İşıl Deniz Turan has helped Maya with another important part of competitive sport what happens inside a young athlete’s head. Following disappointments and setbacks, including what happened with SEM the previous year, she has worked with Maya to put negative thoughts behind her, rebuild her confidence and learn to believe in herself and her abilities.

For Samantha, one of the most important parts of the SEM announcement was seeing other young swimmers from across Aydın succeed too. She said: “I am so happy for the other families in Aydın as well. I am enormously proud of every single one of these children. It is tough on the swimmers, but it’s tough on their families too, financially and emotionally.

“There are the journeys, hotels, equipment, early mornings, long days and the emotions that come with watching your child succeed or sometimes be disappointed. But today is a happy day for all of us in Aydın.

“It doesn’t matter that our children come from different swimming clubs. When they represent Aydın, we should be proud of every one of them. This is only the beginning of the journey. There is still a very long road ahead, but together, as an Aydın swimming community, we can achieve so much.”

And she had a message for the young swimmers who worked towards SEM this year but did not receive the result they had hoped for: “Please don’t give in. Keep training and keep going. One result doesn’t decide what kind of swimmer you can become. Last year Maya didn’t get her opportunity either. This year she did. Believe in yourselves, because I believe in you.”

If her family and coaches have their way, Maya will be remembered not as Didim’s only SEM swimmer, but the first.