The Morning Swim Show, Jan. 16, 2012: Lake Forest High School Swimmers Discuss Idea to Raise Money During Holiday Training

PHOENIX, Arizona, January 16. Peter McCormick and Colin Rowe, both juniors at Lake Forest High School, join today's edition of The Morning Swim Show to talk about their idea to mix in philanthropy with a tough holiday season training set.

The swimmers talk about how they came up with the idea to donate money to children who lost family members in the war on terror, how much money they raised and whether it will become a tradition at Lake Forest, which has a rich swimming history. Be sure to visit SwimmingWorld.TV for more video interviews.

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Morning Swim Show Transcripts
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(Note: This is an automated service where some typos and grammatical errors may occur.)

Peter Busch: Welcome to The Morning Swim Show for Monday, January 16th, 2012. I'm your host, Peter Busch. In the FINIS Monitor today, we'll talk to Peter McCormick and Colin Rowe. They swim for Lake Forest High School near Chicago, and they just held a special fundraising event for children of parents who died serving in the military. Peter and Colin join us right now in the FINIS Monitor from Lake Forest, Illinois. Hey guys, welcome to The Morning Swim Show. How are you?

Colin Rowe: Good. How are you?

Peter McCormick: Thanks for having us.

Peter Busch: Hey, pleasure to have you. Tell us about this event and how you came up with it.

Colin Rowe: Well, in the summertime, I go up to my lake house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and I have a job at Gordy's Marina, and my boss every year has this eight-mile lake swim for the Warriors Foundation. And he confronted me and asked me if I wanted to join because he knew I was a swimmer, and I said, "Sure, why not?" So I grabbed my friend Peter and we did it this summer. Then after we swam, we thought it was a great thing and so we tried to bring it back because we know we swim so much during the school year, so we thought "Why not?" and so it kind of integrated off of that basic idea.

Peter Busch: So the idea is basically raise scholarship money, right, for kids who maybe lost their parents in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Colin Rowe: Yes, correct, that's it.

Peter Busch: Wow. Well, do you guys know anybody who's personally affected or through the course of working with them, have you met people?

Colin Rowe: Actually, ironically enough, one of the kids in our team, his uncle died in battle I think two years ago and so he was a big contributor to this foundation.

Peter Busch: Wow. Peter, tell us about how the event went down that you recently held.

Peter McCormick: Well, we had a training set of 100 100's and basically, we decided to make a pledge sheet of something where people could donate money to and we just kind of got the whole team together, the varsity boys, and we all decided we'd try to at least contribute $10 each, but it turned out that we had a whole lot more people donating money and raised over $3,000.

Peter Busch: Good for you guys. I imagine the word kind of spread around town for such a great cause.

Colin Rowe: Yes, it did so I think that's a good thing because now it influences other teams to try to get something like that going.

Peter Busch: Yes, I was going to say, I mean aside from this interview which we're happy we're doing, is there any kind of Facebook challenge out there or talking to other teams in the area, trying to encourage them to do something similar?

Colin Rowe: Yes, well, in the summer, we're trying to get the whole team up to Lake Geneva to do that eight-mile swim. And in the future, when we do the next 100 100-set, we're going to try to continue that whole charity aspect of it and just try to make that a tradition.

Peter McCormick: And maybe even try to get the JV boys involved somehow, maybe doing 50s or something, just to generate some money.

Peter Busch: A hundred 100's? That's a good workout too while you're at it, huh?

Peter McCormick: Yes, 10,000 yards so in an average practice, it's usually 6,000-7,000.

Peter Busch: Everybody make it?

Peter McCormick: Yes, everyone.

Colin Rowe: Yes.

Peter McCormick: It was great.

Peter Busch: I guess you had some special motivation, right?

Peter McCormick: Yes, absolutely.

Peter Busch: Well, Lake Forest High School you guys swim for, it has some history. I mean you guys have won Swimming World's Boys Title before. Matt Grevers swam there. What's it like to swim for such a prestigious high school?

Colin Rowe: Well, I think it's very motivating to know that you have such a great history with swimming within your high school and you know you have great coaches and you're funded very well, so I think that's very good to know personally.

Peter McCormick: And it feels good to try to continue that legacy that this high school has created as a swim team and just be a part of this really great history of swimming.

Peter Busch: Does Grevers still have any of the school records there?

Peter McCormick: Yes. Most of them, yes.

Peter Busch: Everything but breaststroke, right?

Peter McCormick: Yes [laughs].

Peter Busch: What do you guys swim? Tell me about you guys. What year are you? What do you swim?

Colin Rowe: Well, we're both juniors. I am a sprint freestyler so I generally do the 200 medley relay and the 400 free relay but also individually the 50 freestyle and 100 freestyle.

Peter McCormick: And I primarily do 100 fly and a little bit of distance here and there, like 200 free, but not too much, just mainly 100 fly.

Peter Busch: Any college plans yet for you guys or still just starting to look around?

Colin Rowe: I think we're definitely looking around. We've been looking around for about a year now. And I think we both want to continue our swimming through college.

Peter Busch: Very good. Guys, well, thank you very much for what you did and what you continue to do and for helping to motivate other high schools hopefully across the country to challenge you guys and to do the same thing. We really appreciate it.

Colin Rowe: Yes, thank you.

Peter McCormick: Thank you.

Peter Busch: All right, Peter and Colin, thanks a lot for joining us. That is the guys from Lake Forest High School joining us in the FINIS Monitor. What a great idea for those kids to do. Well, that is it for today's show. I'm Peter Busch reminding you to keep your head down at the finish.

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