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When Isabella Lopez was barely 15 years old, she made a radical decision: she left her parents, her home and her school in Colón, a town in the north of Buenos Aires province, and moved with her two older sisters to La Plata. He says he can no longer bear the bullying and harassment he was exposed to at school.
In the capital, Buenos Aires, he began training in swimming at Club Estudiantes, finished high school and opened a new horizon: today, at 19 years old, he combines his medical studies at the National University of La Plata (UNLP) with long hours of training in the pool, while dreaming of the OceanMan World Open Water Championships in Dubai.
The young swimmer qualified on March 7, when she took fourth place in the junior category (for young people aged 15 to 19 years) in the OceanMan Argentina 5-kilometer race in Embalse, Cordoba. To achieve his dream of representing Argentina in the international event, he needs financial support, as the trip to Dubai is self-funded. His story is not only one of great talent, but also the effort and resilience to turn pain into motivation to compete at the top.
From her home in La Plata, Isabella says in a video call with LA NACION that it was her colleagues who practiced Systematic psychological bullying and social exclusion. “I went from kindergarten to one of the best schools in Kowloon, where the harassment started when I was in sixth grade, because since I had the best GPA in the area, they marked me with science,” she recalls. “Then the girls left me alone and I came home crying every day.”
“One afternoon, I was happy because a girl invited me to do my homework at her house and I thought she was looking for reconciliation. As soon as we arrived and even before a snack, her mother asked me: ‘Start doing my daughter’s homework.’ I did everything, and when it was time for dinner, my mother went to look for me and all the other girls came to eat.” com. sleepoverIssa adds sadly: “They showed me with great hatred that I was outside the group.”
The rivalry with one of her classmates (who was also valedictorian) and her “followers” translated into exclusion both in group work (forcing her to do it alone) and at recess, birthdays, and other parties. They even created a parallel WhatsApp group so no one would go to their 15th party.
The bullying was constant over time and Issa and her family suffered from it a lot, as they felt that some families validated it and teachers did not provide them with answers or solutions. Meanwhile, Issa, even though she had not been exposed to physical violence, was feeling increasingly sad and lonely, because her male colleagues recognized this, but they did not know how to help her either.
In a survey of 342 teachers conducted by the NGO Chicos.net, 80% considered bullying and cyberbullying to be recurring problems in their schools, 72% detected cases, and 90% reported that instances were higher in the past year. Moreover, in the same study, only 10% of teachers admitted that they knew how to handle these situations.
Isabella lived in a house in Colon with her mother, Karina Andina, a kindergarten assistant teacher, and her father, Sergio Lopez, who was an employee at an auto body and paint shop. His two older sisters, Franca and Ornella Andina (now 32 and 30), settled in La Plata to study. So, in 2022, Issa decided to move with them to finish high school and swim in Estudiantes de la Plata. In this new environment, in addition to training to compete in Dubai, he is studying medicine at UNLP.
This decision is also due to her desire to advance in swimming, which is the sport she chose since she was young, after she also participated in artistic gymnastics. “Since I was a child, they put me in the pool at our house, I went to a holiday camp specializing in swimming and then I joined the Los Tipos team, at Club Alianza. But in Colon I felt stagnant because I was only training three times a week for one hour, they did not unite me, and although I always loved competing in the lake, I only participated in the Buenos Aires tournaments,” explains the open water swimmer.
She says happily: “My mother succeeded in enlisting the help of a teacher from the Olympic Park in Buenos Aires, who was training children from the national team, to test me and invite me to join his team, but I felt alone in the capital. He understood me and put me in touch with a coach from Estudiantes de La Plata, where I currently train from Monday to Saturday for two hours.”
Last year, Isabella graduated first in La Plata and was thrilled to be the proud standard bearer once again. By then, he had the daily company of his mother again, who had also moved to the capital, Buenos Aires, and began competing in regional and national tournaments. In February this year, he also passed the medical college admission course and in April he started studying. “Everything takes me a long time, but I’m doing well,” says Isabella Lopez, who continues to train and raise money to realize her dream of competing in the Open Water World Cup in Dubai. “I’m happy because I’ve made new friends, both at school and at the club.”
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