Swimming at Basketball | Teen Ink

Swimming at Basketball

November 24, 2010
By CgWillis GOLD, Racine, Wisconsin
CgWillis GOLD, Racine, Wisconsin
19 articles 0 photos 6 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;The problem is not the problem, the problem is your attitude about the problem. Got that?&quot; --Coach Brevin.<br /> <br /> &quot;What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.&quot; --Ralph Waldo Emerson


After a long day of watching my friends play basketball, getting the fans pumped up and absolutely crazy, holding in comments to the refs that would for sure lose us the sportsmanship award, and pretending that obnoxious coach on the bench isn’t my dad, my friends from Racine Christian School and I quickly changed into our swimsuits and raced to the water park where we were staying (the Blue Harbor Resort).
We all met up in the hot tub, where we relaxed for a little while. But soon that got boring, so we waited in a line that could have stretched all the way to my old house in Florida just for some tubes. Once we each got a tube, we got into yet another line for the slides. Finally, we got to the slides and we split into two teams, racing each other to see which slide was faster: the orange or yellow. I was on the orange slide’s team. My friend Jessica and I got into our double tube and immediately slipped down the slide. We tried to keep our arms up, but whenever the slide curved, the tube would go up the sides so much that we felt like we’d flip over, so we held onto our tube for our lives. After most the almost-flipping was done, the slide took us through a dark tunnel with tiny lights lined up along the side. A huge wave of freezing cold water met us at the tunnel’s exit, or atleast if felt like freezing cold water after being in the hot tub! We determined, after a couple more goes, that the orange slide was indeed faster than the yellow slide.

We all got impatient and didn’t wanna wait in line any longer, so we left the slides and went into the bigger pool. There’s this giant plastic and very slippery snake in the water that you can sit on. There were a few random people on, but soon us bobcats took it over. There were about twenty, twenty-five of us pushing and shoving each other off. Only about fifteen people at the most can fit on the snake, so we constantly fought for our position. We scared off everyone else who was on and soon we had it all to ourselves. However, when the lifeguards switched duties, the new lifeguard said we couldn’t push and so we moved away to play a game of pool basketball. A couple hours later, all of us and our battle wounds (bites and scratches from fighting over the snake) left because the pool was shutting down for the night.

The next day, Saturday, we went swimming yet again after our games. Some of my friends and I had another few races down the slides and then another war on the snake until we were kicked outta that pool. So we went into the lazy river and made it the “crazy river” until we had to leave to watch the boys’ championship game (our archenemy, Randolph, versus a random team, CWC).

After we got back from the championship game (where we found we had won the sportsmanship award finally!!!! And where we made our hate for Randolph very obvious yet again), we all went into the park for a late night party. My friend Jessica and I picked up a little girl. We had gone into the lazy river and she attached herself to our tube. She told us she was four and four quarters, almost five and that her name was Lourli (I don’t know how to spell it correctly). She wouldn’t let us leave her sight and eventually we just decided to swim with her. In the lazy river Jessica and I were just floating around on our tubes, but Lourli was swimming like a mermaid (which she called her mermaid pose) and got all the empty tubes out of the river. My friends Jessica, Olivia, and I soon gave up floating and ran after her in the lazy river. She swam around like a mermaid and swam under layers of tubes so we’d have to frantically push people out of the way so that we could catch up to her. She did that for probably an hour or so and finally she decided she wanted to go into the big pool.
We got into the big pool and realized that Lourli wasn’t able to reach the bottom after the third of six stairs. We told her we didn’t think it’d be a great idea for us to all go into there. But she refused and just started swimming. We started laughing and had to run to catch up with her, since she can swim faster, better, and many more ways that we can. The little four year old went up the the snake and pulled herself up. She was knocked under the water and just came right back up. She swam around like that for another hour, while we watched amazed. Our friend Ricky pretended to be at the olympics anouncing “Lourli just won her third gold medal for swimming.” Finally we decided it was time to dry off and just go wander in the halls, so we found Lourli’s parents and left her with them and left the pool area. And that was our last time swimming at tournaments this year.

The author's comments:
For the basketball tournaments, I had to miss a day of gym class. All freshmen are required to pass swimming in order to graduate. My gym teacher told me that, since I'd be swimming, I could write a paper on my experience and turn it in to make up they days of class that I'd miss.

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