Piranhas nab Kaskaskia crown
Over the winter, the Waterloo Park Board voted to close Sondag pool because of safety issues.
The shutdown meant that the town’s legendary swim squad, the Piranhas, had nowhere to float their boat. They turned to the Columbia YMCA.
“Because we swam there, we weren’t able to hold any home meets,” Waterloo coach Bart Jones said. “Our league is a swimming and diving league and because that pool doesn’t have a board, we couldn’t hold any home meets. Traditionally we always have held home meets because we had access to a pool right in the middle of town that had a diving board and a nice facility. This year we didn’t have that and we had to travel everywhere.
“Because we didn’t have a diving board we didn’t really have anywhere to practice diving. For basically all of our dual meets we were basically giving away 60 or 70 points, depending on what kind of divers the other team had. In almost every single dual meet we were giving every team we were swimming against 60 or 70 points.”
That doesn’t meant that there was any less bite in the Piranhas, though, as Waterloo took home top honors at the Kaskaskia Swim and Dive League Championships Saturday with a total of 519 points.
Columbia came in second, followed by Trenton, Greenville and Sparta Country Club.
“It felt really good,” Jones said. “This year, with this team not having a pool, and with really low numbers compared to prior years, I didn’t really know what our chances were at conference. I knew we could have some success in the regular season, but I didn’t really know what our chances would be like in conference.
“I knew that it was going to take some creative managing of the lineup and some really good swims by the kids for us to have a chance to win. The kids all did their part and it felt really good.”
The team as a whole got a big lift from the four-person quads sent to tackle the relays. Piranhas big and small played important roles in the title surge.
“There was a time in the meet where we were down,” Jones said. “We had a relay get disqualified, we had a swimmer get disqualified and had a couple of kids in the IM who didn’t have their best swims.
“Things started turning around in the freestyle and the butterfly. After the butterfly we got up on top and we didn’t look back and that was a really good feeling. Across all age groups in the freestyle and butterfly the kids really started picking it up and swimming well, moving up and doing well in the finals.”
Waterloo finished the season a perfect 8-0 in dual meets. It says a lot about the character of these fish, who could have been demoralized without their own bowl.
“It is not just the kids, it is also the parents,” Jones said. “This couldn’t really happen if the parents weren’t really committed to this also. This is one of those situations where you can’t just get up and ride your bike to practice. If you are going to be on the swim team, mom and dad are going to have to figure out a way to drive you there on the way to work and drop you off, make sure you have a ride home.
“It’s not an easy situation and without the parents this year and them going out of their way to make this a possibility we couldn’t even have fielded a team. The kids were also very resilient throughout the year and dealt with a lot of adversity very well. It is a testament to their character, definitely.”
The future of the Waterloo pool is still up in the air, but the summer of 2010 will stand as a testament to the willpower and hunger of the mighty Piranhas.
“I cross my fingers and hope that this gets back on the ballot again and we have an opportunity to pass this so the kids in the town, not just on the swim team, have a chance to swim in a pool and have something to do in the summer,” Jones said. “But this is one thing that the kids on the team can hang their hats on and look back on.
“Waterloo has traditionally had a lot of success in conference swimming against these teams, but this year I think was probably our biggest challenge in a long time. They can look back on this season and think this is the season we didn’t have a pool. We had to travel everywhere and we still won. It was really good.”
