College Notebook: Swimming shenanigans
Cometh the hour, in come the clowns. The steamy hurly-burly was priceless comedy: randomers bombed into the pool, loutish blokes strutted about in scandalously revealing, erm, towels carrying crates of Carling, the running order was written, then loudly scrapped, and then rewritten. The scarred-for-life under-eights swimming class made a hasty retreat. Welcome to the annual college swimming gala.
This was a fine version of organised chaos, like a stock exchange with injected hormones, or a medieval flea market. There was an ear-splitting cacophony of partisan encouragement, intermingled with wolf-whistles and, in the seldom silence, hilarious revelations; “he’s got three testicles” being one. Our MC for the evening, Adam Clark, strolled around, hollering into his fuck-off, big daddy YUSU megaphone until bright red in the face. He was still inaudible and the first race started 28 minutes late.
Thankfully, the spectators had organised themselves into neat little sections on the poolside, each a huddle of nakedness, but they created a cauldron of noise and made the occasion. Halifax College, following an exhaustive trawl through Emily Scott’s phonebook, excelled in the individual events, the presidential candidate bravely treading the slippery six inch ‘no man’s land’ between spectators and wetness, issuing impassioned support for her college, before diving in and swimming a few lengths herself.
Apparently Wentworth were there, somewhere, but some heats still featured only two contestants in a sort of ‘floats at dawn’ race to the death. At one point, a Langwith swimmer, quite possibly immersed in water for the first time, languished a minute behind his opponents – he received the kind of rousing crescendo reserved only for the plucky loser. The Alcuin entrant in the backstroke fretfully admitted he was ‘bricking’ himself at the prospect of diving in backwards, but then the shallow end was only 0.9m deep. One male in the freestyle decided to don Lycra trunks in a barely disguised attempt to look professional. He then proceeded to false start, although it was tight.
Alcuin were prepared; Paul Guest had clearly expired several blue biros in allocating names to races in an ink-sodden notepad, and their swimmers came home first with remarkable frequency, to whoops of joy. In the end, they accumulated 115 points, fifteen clear of Derwent, although they were overdue a boost in the overall standings. Wentworth limped home in last place with 34, scarcely beaten by Langwith. Then a shower of water polo balls rained down and it was time to clear the pool, you would think Archbishops Holgate was the only pool in the area or something. The swimming gala exuded everything brilliant about college sport: hilarious, fanatical, top-notch entertainment. Maybe you had to be there.
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Why is this the only mention of college sport? We’ve even had football matches given the green light this past three weeks for chuff’s sake!