When 6-year-old Ben Pastva was at a neighborhood pool in Fairfax, Virginia, a coach noticed his breaststroke. "He's a natural," the coach told Ben's mother. The coach invited Ben to compete on the local team.
By age 11, he'd been swimming year-round for several years when he began specializing in freestyle. He became known as a sprinter, meaning that he excelled in races of 50 to 100 yards. Those distances demand intense energy for short bursts of activity.
By high school, Ben was considered his team's top sprinter. That's also when he began struggling with his health. In his freshman year, Ben was out for several weeks with what doctors thought was pneumonia.
From then on, his swim meet times slowed slightly. Although he still felt strong, Ben started to wonder if he could compete at a top level. Ultimately, both he and his coach figured he was just tired and needed to work harder.
By his senior year, Ben had committed to swimming for Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. He enrolled in the fall of 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were no swim meets, but the team still practiced.
When Ben wasn't swimming, he ran and lifted weights. Yet instead of getting fitter, he started feeling weaker. He lost weight and became out of breath quickly.
Even so, the summer after his freshman year, back home in Fairfax, he swam with two teams and took a lifeguarding job. As the summer progressed, Ben felt so bad that he quit one team. He didn't tell his family or frie.