Champions

I helped coach a championship team last year at UWM. It was the time of my life and I love that team like I've loved no other job. That's the funny part. It was my job to show up and be friends with them, coach them, make them faster, yell at them on occasion and swim with them every once in a while. It was my job to make them better and they got better. I never dreaded going to work. Work was exciting. To call it work, that's just an insult. It was a little slice of heaven and winning a championship with them was a dream come true.

Well, last night, these guys did it again. Going into the last night of competition in second place, UWM pulled ahead early on and had an unbelievable night of racing, finishing in first by 27 points. I had to watch the meet streaming over the internet and as painful and somewhat tear-jerking as that was, I am thankful that I could view it somehow. But there is no substitute for the real thing and my heart ached at times, even questioning decisions I have made in the past. But I wasn't questioning how much UWM deserved another championship. They work harder than anyone else. They have a head coach working harder than anyone else. And they have something common in all great championship teams, especially those back to back championship teams. It was printed in bold on their conference t-shirts: UNITY.

They couldn't have picked a better word. Congratulations, Milwaukee!