Highlands High School, located in Fort Thomas, Kentucky just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, won the combined team trophy at this year’s Kentucky High School State Championships. The achievement marked the school’s first state trophy since 1995.
Contributing to individual state titles for the Bluebirds were Highlands juniors Jack Banks with his 55.65 100 breast and Mac Russell, the first Northern Kentucky male since 1973 to win a state title in the 50 free (20.63). Russell also finished runner-up in the 100 free, touching in a time of 45.81.
Along with swimmers everywhere, Russell and company are out of the water, but longing for the day they can dive back in with teammates in pursuit of another state title. In the meantime, amateur filmmaker Russell rounded up some of his pals to produce a fun video depicting how swimmers are trying to stay wet at home during quarantine.
“The idea came after seeing a bunch of other sports teams doing fun little videos with what they would do in their sport if they were playing right now. So I wondered what it would look like for swimmers because we can’t go swimming at a pool (unless you have one) anytime soon, so you’re kinda stuck.
“Obviously I have time on my hands and I missed my team and I wanted to do something inspiring.”
The 17-year-old also told SwimSwam that his nana has COVID-19, so the swimmer has a personal connection to what’s going on with the bigger picture.
“She’s 65 and has been on a ventilator for 12 days,” says Russell. “I really want to encourage people to stay home.”
Escape for 2 minutes and take a look at kids having fun trying to ‘swim’ at home, with some crafty water-throwers, to boot.
