There were only a few more days left before the swimming team ended, and a new swimming term started, and our coach decided to have some fun.
We were told to do a kick-board stacking relay. It sounded fun.
A kickboard is basically a flat piece of floating board. It helps with kicking, and you grasp it in your hands. But not all of them were flat. Some of them were curved, making stacking them up extremely hard.
A relay, on the other hand, works like this: half of the team are on the other end, and the other half on this end. The first person dives in, swims across the pool, and touches the wall. As soon as he touches the wall, a person on that side dives in. The process repeats until everyone has gone.
In all the relays I have done in my life, whether it be balancing a penny on my forehead, or even swimming all four strokes at the same time, this one was the most crazy.
To begin with, the first person kicked across. We had picked the fastest swimmer, and everyone was fast. There was nothing to worry about. A person on the other end was ready with his kickboard. As soon as the person had touched the wall, he had grabbed his kickboard and stacked it on top of his. The race was on.
By the forth person, there were four kickboards stacked unevenly on top of each other. Some were curved, some were flat, and they were looking like they were about to fall over any moment.
Luckily for me, I was last (it was the position everyone wanted). There were eight kickboards stacked up on top of mine, and they were on the verge of toppling over.
I stopped and started organizing them.
Back on the deck of the swimming pool, my teammates were jeering at me to hurry up. I quickly stacked it and began swimming again.
It turned out, this helped greatly. Stopping and stacking is a lot faster than if the entire pile falls over the lane and into multiple directions. We won, and the nearest team was still pretty far. I don’t know exactly, because the boards were stacked high over me.
When I got out, the team dumped all of the boards on me. It was fun, and we were just going to take turns dumping them on each other when the coach came over.