By Preston Williams

You know the Montgomery County Swim League season is winding down when the laundry baskets are lined up outside the pool deck at Olney Mill Swim Club, waiting to be filled with school supplies, toiletries and other items as parting gifts for the college-bound Otters.

Many teams in the MCSL and other Washington leagues salute their seniors at the end of the season with balloons and flowers and the like. The laundry basket, that plastic vessel that makes repeated voyages between home and higher academia, is an Olney Mill tradition, dating back at least two decades.

It’s sort of reverse trick-or-treating, late-teen style. Instead of going door to door with a pumpkin asking for candy, the more practical goodies come to them, in a laundry basket.

Swimmers and parents dropped items into the baskets this week, and younger teammates will present them to the seniors at a spaghetti dinner and pep rally Friday evening.

The Otters compete at Northwest Branch in their fifth and final dual meet Saturday.

“I’ve been looking forward to it since I joined the team,” said Olney Mill swimmer Rachel Witkin, a recent Sherwood graduate who has been donating laundry basket items for the past nine years. This year she will receive her own basket to lug to Johns Hopkins University.

Team members Christy Fury, Cara Wagner and Eric Meile are other seniors who will not leave empty-handed Friday.

“Kids have come back and swam for the basket,” Olney Mill Coach Chris Duff said. “It’s kind of a big deal to them.”

Gina Swindler, who this summer has been eligible to swim for the team after completing her freshman year at Temple University, received her basket last year. It was so full that her mother, Janet, had to help her carry it.

Swindler said she received so much toothpaste, tissues, shampoo, notebooks and other items that she saved half of her 2009 haul for her upcoming sophomore year at Temple, where she is studying advertising and art direction.

Even the less practical items in her basket — a kaleidoscope and a plastic giraffe and shark — came in handy. Swindler fiddled with the kaleidoscope when she needed a break from writing papers, and she and her suitemate would “steal” the animals from each other as a sort of game throughout the school year.

“The years before I got my basket, I was always excited to buy things for the seniors,” Swindler said. “And I’m excited this year because I know better what to get them.”

Swindler is one of three Olney Mill team members who will receive an even greater honor Friday: a personalized towel with the team logo, a gift bestowed on swimmers who return to the team after their freshman year at college. Tim Vaughan and Zackry Wepasnick also will receive the towels.

“It’s kind of symbolic,” said Swindler, an Otter since seventh grade. “I know the team pretty well, and I just feel getting the towel with my name on it is going to be a way to keep them with me.”

And she already has a laundry basket to carry it in.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under Summer League. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.