When my coach, Jenna, said we were in for a tough practice, I had no idea she meant a practice where you would be scared for your life.

My mind was focused on the main set, and the pain that was sure to follow ten, 400 IMs pace.   An IM, or individual medley, is where you swim every stroke in a specific order.  Pace means to hold your fastest possible pace for the entire time without slowing down. 

We had just finished warm up and had very grudgingly started that main set when the school loudspeaker went off.  Because my ears were full of water, I had no idea what was being said, so I continued to swim.  It’s not like it never went off either, because we’ve had the bell go off, and even the occasional false fire alarm. 

 During my fly part of the IM, I vaguely heard someone yelling something about closing the door.  My mind focused on the swimming aspect, I didn’t think that much of it until I saw my coach sprinting to the door.  

I think that at that time, any reasonable person would have probably stopped swimming and checked to make sure everything was okay.  When I say “a reasonable person” I’m excluding myself.  For reasons still unknown, I continued to swim the IM, thinking; “Eh, that’s a little strange but whatever.  She probably just forgot to shut the door.”  I’m not even remotely sure why I even thought that, because normally we always left the door open.  

I continued swimming until the lights were suddenly shut off, and at that I did stop and lift up my goggles so I could try and see what was happening.  As my eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness, I heard my teammates start to murmer about what was going on as well.

At that point, the loudspeaker went off for a second time. This time I did manage to hear what was said.

“Lockdown, Lockdown, Lockdown.  This is not a drill.”  

I heard a voice yelling;

“GET OUT OF THE WATER”, and rushing to the edge of the pool, we all scrambled out.  It’s funny because I was actually pretty calm, probably due to the fact that my heartrate couldn’t have gotten much higher than it already was from swimming.  The only thing that I could see as I stood, unsure, on the pool deck were the outlines of my teammates, just silhouettes from the red emergency lights.  

My coach ushered all of us out of the water and upstairs into an electrical room.  We stood, dripping wet, in huddles, social distancing gone like it was never a thing.  

We stood that way for close to 20 minutes, some people in tears, others just holding on to their friends.  My coach got on the phone with the police, but kept her voice to a whisper in case someone was inside the pool room.  

I’m sure everyone’s mind was wandering to foreign places, just as mine was.  What would happen if someone came into the pool with a gun?  Would they hear us in the electrical  room?  Would we have to barricade the door? Was this actually even happening?

By this point I was just sort of numb.  I wasn’t freaking out, but I was a little scared.  It sounds a little crazy but the situation also had a sort of thrilling feeling, like we were in some kind of movie.   At one point I had sort of an epiphany moment where I thought “what would happen if someone actually did find us here?”  Multiple different scenarios started drifting around in my head, and during that time, I came to really understand the fear that people in real school shootings must have felt.

After about another ten minutes of standing there in the dark, puddles growing on the floor, the loudspeaker turned on again.  I know we all braced for another jarring message, but in fact, it was the opposite.

It turns out that after all that time, the school was testing a new automated announcement system, and there was no actual shooter.  They had forgotten to tell us beforehand, and assuming no one was in the building, they didn’t announce that it was a test for some time. 

I felt the emotion and fear of all of us come sort of lifting up, like a blanket being thrown off.  As the lights turned back on I started laughing.  One of the first things that my mind went to was the practice, hoping that we would have been able to get out of some of the IMs.  (We didn’t.  Our coach made us do all of them anyway).  

But if that wasn’t the best team bonding activity, I have yet to hear of a better one.