Lightning Rains on Swimmers’ Parade

The swim and dive meet against Sunnyslope High School and Sunrise Mountain High School was canceled on October 6th,2022.

 The meet was canceled because of rain and lightning at the Sunrise Mountain High School pool.

Swimmers swimming with lightning can be very dangerous, which is why it was called.

“ Whenever there’s lightning in the vicinity of vision during swim meets or practices they have to cancel it because of the high risk of electrocution,” said Sophomore Sophia Piña.

The swimmers were in the middle of swimming the boy’s 200 IM, so people were trying to figure out how to get them out of the water safely.

“They made an announcement about the meet so I hopped in the water and tried to get their attention to tell them that they had to stop swimming because of the lightning”, said Sophomore Natatlie Fox.

When they eventually got the swimmers out of the water, they had everyone go into the Lifeguard Hut.

“ It was very disappointing that we all had to be cooped up in this one room with both teams. Everyone was in the one room. It was chaotic. It was wet. It was kind of smelly. People were sitting, people were standing.,” said Junior Jessie Frank.

While waiting for the meet to be called, the Sunrise Mountain’s team had some homecoming proposals to do.

“I think they thought it was canceled so they could do their homecoming proposals. I actually would have never thought about that. They were probably gonna do it after the meet anyway, and it would have been more special for them that way. But honestly, the other team did seem pretty excited,” said Piña.

The proposals were the one thing that brought both teams together in the end.

“Everyone was celebrating. It’s just something cool. We all just got to celebrate together. The room was a sound echo wave literally dancing. I was clapping, there were a ton of amplified voices,” said Sophomore Lindsay Medina.

The situation was very confusing to a lot of people. Most people didn’t know what was happening until after.

“I also think it took everyone by surprise because it was all last minute everyone screaming right away and get them out and get them out and understand what’s going on,” said Sunnyslope Swimmer Freshman Madison Weisheit.

The overall reaction was very mixed when the meet was canceled.

“It was crazy. People were going wild. It was very chaotic. Some people were happy. Some people were actually pretty disappointed or even excited that the races were canceled,” said Frank.

This cancellation was odd because it has never happened during a meet during the 2022 swim season.

“This hasn’t happened during a meet that I’ve been to but it’s happened during practice a couple of times,” said Sunnyslope Diver Elias Mercado.

The meet started to be called during the beginning of the meet.

“After the first three events, I believe they cut it off. Someone saw lightning  3 miles away,” said Piña.