Before she was old enough to actually swim competitively, her sisters made Beard the team's mascot. Besides swimming, Beard played soccer and softball, took tap and jazz dance classes, and raised several pets.
Beard's parents encouraged their children to swim for exercise, but did not push them too hard. "There wasn't exactly a swimming gene pool here," Dan Beard explained in Sports Illustrated. "We weren't setting out to make champions. We just liked the benefits of the sport, the competition, the fact that it makes kids schedule their time, the friendships that it brings. Nothing really was predestined, although I will say that when Amanda was five years old, she did say she was going to swim in the Olympics. We just smiled."
Moving up
Beard joined the Irvine Novaquatics swim club in January 1994. The club's coach, Dave Salo, recognized the young swimmer's potential. He talked to Beard's parents about having their daughter train full-time in swimming. "There were a number of people who were talking to us, saying we had to make the commitment," Dan Beard stated in Sports Illustrated. Beard cried when she learned she would have to give up soccer, but she agreed that she wanted to train seriously in swimming.
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