Rollins Swimming Participates in Ted Mullin Hour of Power

By Abby Boone, Swimming World College Intern

LAKELAND – For the past six years, the Rollins swim team has participated in the Ted Mullin Hour of Power Relay for Pediatric Sarcoma Research. The event is an hour long, all-out, continuous relay race meant to raise team spirits, sarcoma awareness, and money for sarcoma research.

The relay began in 2006 as a memorial for Ted Mullin, a Carleton College swimmer who passed away after battling with sarcoma, a rare soft-tissue cancer.

Last year, 167 teams participated in the event and raised $75,000 dollars. In its 8 years, the Hour of Power has raised more than $500,000 for sarcoma research.

Rollins Swimming head coach Rick Morris said his team began participating in the event because of their tie to Carleton College.

“We’ve swam against Carleton College when they’ve come on their winter training trips to Florida,” Morris said. “We swam against them when Ted Mullin was on the team, and we wanted to get involved because of this connection.”

Since Morris’ initial decision to join the Hour of Power, the team has raised more than $2,000 for sarcoma research, selling t-shirts some years and raising $160 this year alone.

Captain Daniel Mazur has fond memories, having participated in the event all four years of his college swimming career. He loves how the event brings the sport of swimming together as a whole to support one cause. Even if teams aren’t together, they are united, swimming at the same time for a specific purpose. Mazur would love to see more Sunshine State Conference teams get involved, especially if they were to participate at the same pool.

“The event builds great camaraderie because we spend the entire hour cheering for one another,” Mazur said. “It would be great to do that alongside another team, swimming together instead of competing against one another.”

Captain Chandler Armistead agreed, explaining how the Hour of Power really helped her settle in at Rollins.

“As a freshman, I wasn’t used to being away from home,” Armistead said. “That day I felt at home; I felt like I was surrounded by family. My team was clapping, cheering, laughing, all while raising money for sarcoma awareness.”

The event means even more to Armistead because she had a close friend pass away from sarcoma during her freshman year of college. When she found out that Rollins would be participating in something that was so personal, she was happy.

“I’ve always found myself swimming for someone else who can’t,” Armistead said. “Whenever things get tough, I think of those in tougher situations. Losing my friend Jerri was very hard on me, and I swim for her. I swim for her because she inspired me with her ideology of living life with no regrets. Every year, the relay is an opportunity to renew this and to remember her, Ted, and others who have lost their battle with cancer.”

Armistead hopes Rollins will continue to participate in the event because she wants others to feel that sense of family and support that she felt from her team, and she wants to continue raising money and awareness.

Armistead is proud of the bond she has with her teammates, and Morris feels the event and other volunteer work the team does brings his swimmers closer together.

“We also are very active with the Ronald McDonald House. We do recurring volunteer projects with them.”

The team constantly organizes groups, helping out at the local Ronald McDonald House almost every weekend. By helping the community through the Ronald McDonald House and through events like the Hour of Power, Morris is able to teach his team the value of service, and bring his swimmers closer together, both in and out of the pool.

For more information on the Hour of Power, including how to get involved, visit http://go.carleton.edu/HourOfPower.

Abby Boone is an English major at Florida Southern College, and has spent two years on NCAA Division II swim team in Lakeland. Before heading off to college, she trained at Cardinal Aquatics and Triton Swimming.

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Allie

9 years ago

Wow what a great article! I am a swimmer at Carleton College and it is so good to hear about other teams involved with Hour of Power. Thank you for writing this!