Swim Meets and Homecoming

For the past three days, I have been subject to the exquisite torture of a swim meet—nerve wracking, long, exhausting, and just painful, yet somehow intensely fun.

    Here’s the thing about swim meets: there is a definite reason that swimming, unlike other sports, doesn't have a competition every week or every other week—or anything regularly, really. The meets are really, really long. I’m not kidding. Friday took four hours, Saturday took seven, and Sunday took six. And it wasn't even a prelim/final meet. Those take even longer. In addition to the immense time strain, they are also completely draining. On Saturday, I nearly passed out while talking on the phone to my friend. That tired. No athlete can continuously and regularly withstand that sort of physical demand, not only because it’s just exhausting, but because it impairs their physical and mental ability beyond belief. Today at school, one of my teammates with whom I share a math class basically tried to sleep the whole period. He didn't (mostly because he didn't do so well on the last test and now wanted to do better), but he looked like he was going to fall asleep any moment.  I finished my history test in record time (fifteen minutes to answer twenty multiple choice and write two essays) so I could just get done and go take a nap.

    During the swim meet, you also have to be very careful about what event they’re on. Some events take only a few minutes, while others can last up to nearly half an hour. It’s a little bit frazzling, and sometimes a little bit panicky. Another awful thing about swim meets is being comfortable and then being forced to get in the water. During the breaks between the events, we get dry and put on some heat-insulating uniforms, and most of us have fuzzy blankets or soft jackets or something. When you are very tired and in the midst of relaxing, with good music and good company (and maybe a physics textbook), and have a very soft and fluffy blanket poncho wrapped around you and you are very warm and dry, you just do not want to move. To have to not only move but get into freezing water...well, it makes you want to cry every time.

    Despite all this, though, the swim meet was pretty darn amazing. I did pretty well, relative to myself, though I am nowhere near the top swimmers in my group. And another brilliant thing—I finally realised what an amazing team my swim team really is. Because we’re actually a team.

See, here’s the thing. I've been part of a team before, but I've never been part of a family team, where everyone on the team is just completely comfortable and at home with each other. One guy brought some weird peppermint extract thing, and it was passed around for all to use (well, all that wanted it). We bring chairs to the meet and arrange them in sort of a circle, or at least a group thing, and then the chairs are free game. Anyone is welcome to sit in any chair, regardless of whose it is, because no one minds. Phones are freely exchanged among the team, which is pretty amazing, if I do say so myself, considering how attached people are to their phones. Food is sort of just a free for all. I saw several people over the weekend digging into other people’s bags for food, and no one minded. Even blankets are shared. And as long as someone isn't using them, any of them will lend you their goggles and/or swim cap, if you need it.

Even more proof of this is how close members of the team are even outside of swimming. We have one guy that literally has a permanent residence in another teammate’s house. Another one refers to his friend’s parents as “Mom” and “Dad”, because he’s so close to them. Parties (or at least meet-ups) involving members of the swim team occur often. We have a Breakfast Club, and sometimes we go to Moe’s on Wednesdays.

I got to know some of my teammates pretty well over the course of the weekend (which isn't surprising, considering the SEVENTEEN HOURS), and I must say...I’m very impressed with the unity and cohesiveness of the team.

    In other news, I was coerced into going to homecoming, because my friend’s parents decided to suddenly realise that their son was getting some semblance of a social life and started to completely freak out. And homecoming was awful. The music was awful. The people there were awful. I’m pretty sure I made at least one guy go home and cry. I went through a throng of people to see what homecoming was all about, and I completely gave up when I saw the grinding. And the shoes? Well, let’s just say I could fill a whole lake with the amount of shoes that were just lying around there.

It was awful. Just plain out horrible. Unlike the swim meet, there were ZERO redeeming qualities about this event.

Yeah.

Until next time, then!