When a surprise ice storm canceled all after-school practices and events on Tuesday afternoon, members of the boys’ swim team decided to give their fellow students a big surprise.
“We were scraping our own cars and we eventually just started doing all of them,” Maximus Tripp, a junior on the team said.
The team ran around the parking lot, pointing to frosted cars and rushing to clear them of ice, paying no heed to the whims of traffic and weather.
“We simply helped some of our classmates by cleaning off their cars because we know it can be a pain to do,” said Tripp.
It all started as a prank: junior Michael Johnson said, “A few of the guys were waiting for us to get back to our cars so they could ‘ambush’ us with their scrapers as a joke.” From there, the swimmers scraped off the cars of teammates, and ended up deciding to do all the cars in the lot.
This type of light-hearted fun is well within the character of the swim team. Leading into Thursday’s meet against Des Moines Hoover, the team can be seen around school wearing aprons and chef’s hats. They are famous (perhaps infamous?) for their annual performance at the Follies, Swamzers. This is just icing on the cake.
Tuesday afternoon marks the third time the swim team has had to cancel practice this week. Due to issues with the chemical levels in the pool, both practices on Monday had to be canceled.
With these cancellations, members of the team are concerned about the team’s readiness to compete.
“We are all worried for the coming meets, as our lack of conditioning will most likely take a toll on us,” Johnson said.
Despite these challenges, the swim team is having an incredible season.
“Our team is growing and our times are falling,” said Johnson, “In the first four meets we have won more [meets] than in the past two years combined.”
If you want to see the boys’ swim team compete, you can come and watch them at the Riverhawk Natatorium on January 7th vs. Bishop Garrigan.