I believe that the act of naming something is incredibly powerful. Everything in the world has a name and that name has an identity attached to it. The moment you think of a name, the image attached to it pops into your head. My wife will be the first to tell you how crazy I am about naming things, it took almost 7 months to name our son, granted I work at a swim school and stare at attendance rosters and heat sheets with hundreds of names on it regularly so I might be a bit more picky than most. I have 4 acoustic guitars at home and each one has a specific name that I gave it that matches it’s sound or look.
In the team’s early years we competed in the Desert Swim League, an organization of recreational swim programs that come together every summer. As a team, our numbers in the DSL were fairly decent and mirror what we bring to club meets currently, around 30-40 swimmers per meet and around 10-15 in the championship. In 2016, the last year we participated in the DSL, we were the second smallest team in the league. Most teams have around 100+ swimmers with the biggest team bringing 300+ swimmers to compete. We finished 6th out of 13, with only 10 swimmers in the final. Small team in a big team environment. Small, yet mighty.
When Ms. Kim and I talk about our team and the journey we’ve been on, the road that has taken us to our current position and the future path we are navigating, we speak about the importance of the atmosphere of our team. We are a DIY kind of team. When Ms. Kim noticed the lack of options for a swim team in the north Scottsdale and Cave Creek area, she started one of her own. When she started the team, we didn’t have a pool, so she built one herself in her own backyard. When she and I realized the caliber of talent we were producing at the recreational level was equal to club teams around the city, she and I started a club team of our own. Our team is growing now and instead of looking for an alternate location, we’re working on either adding on to our pool or building another pool on the property. We’ve created every part of our team from scratch.
Fast forward to now, 4 years of hard work and dedication came to its highest point at the Age Group Classic (2021 State Championship). With only 7 swimmers we placed 13th overall, out of 31 teams that competed in the entire state of Arizona. Small, yet very mighty indeed.
Keep in mind that up to this point we have made everything up on our own. We dreamed an idea and made it a reality. We started a AZ Swimming sanctioned club team in the middle of the desert in the backyard of our owner’s house training out of a 20 yard pool using hand-me-down dry land equipment and we are producing some of the best swimmers in the state of Arizona. Our way. There is no handbook on starting a club team. There isn’t a list of instructions on how to operate with the likes of teams that have been in the Valley for 20 years and longer with coaches who have swam and coached for 40 years and more. We have manifested our reality out of sheer will and support of the community we’ve grown. We made it up from scratch out of the dirt and desert dust our pool is surrounded by.
So with all of this in mind as I was searching what would fit our team best, it hit me at practice one day. I saw our mascot with my own eyes right next to our pool. As a matter of fact, they’re all over the place at the swim school, if you know where to look. Hard to catch a glimpse sometimes as they’re small and fast…
Small, mighty, fast, resilient, resourceful, self sufficient…
A shark? Too easy. A piranha? Too obvious. A penguin? Too goofy. A sea-otter? Too cartoony. We are in Arizona after all, why not go with something native, something homegrown? What should we call ourselves?
Waterjack (wôdər jak) Noun
A swimmer as fast in the water as a jackrabbit on land.
