This year’s NECA Convention and Trade Show in San Diego featured Olympic medalist Katie Ledecky as a special guest speaker for Monday’s general session. Ledecky is a 14-time Olympic medalist, 21-time world champion, and 16-time world record breaker. She spoke to a packed crowd of NECA attendees about her swimming career and offered leadership insights.
Ledecky began by discussing her experience of becoming an Olympic athlete and emphasized the importance her early swimming coaches had on her career. Her coaches were the ones who encouraged her to set goals. Ledecky spoke about how in preparation for the 2016 Olympics she set some ambitious goals for herself to break several world records. Needless to say, she accomplished those goals and then some.
“There is great power in goal setting,” Ledecky said, “Great power in setting your sights on something that might not seem possible at first.”
Ledecky continued and discussed her experience preparing for the 2020 Olympics which were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of the pandemic, both training and participating in the Olympics was a different experience for her and offered several challenges. Katie overcame those challenges in the end and said the experience taught her adaptability and resiliency. She was able to push through and continue her training thanks to the support of the community around her.
Toward the end of her speech, Ledecky spoke about the four coaches she had throughout her Olympic career. All of these coaches encouraged her, helped her through the hard days, and helped her develop both inside and outside of the pool. The message she wanted NECA attendees to take away from her experience was the importance of good leadership. Ledecky said that many of the NECA attendees have the power to make a positive impact on people they work with every day, and she wanted the audience to know that impact can last for a lifetime.
Afterward, Katie showed the crowd in Ballroom 6 of the San Diego Convention Center her most recent medals that she won at the Paris Olympics just a few months ago. She also mentioned that she’d love to compete in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. So who knows, maybe we’ll see Katie Ledecky again at the 2028 NECA show!
