The neighborhoods were screaming, screaming, screaming at one another over chlorinated turquoise.
"Are we not the winning team?"
"YES, WE ARE THE WINNING TEAM!"
"Are they not the losing team?"
"YES, THEY ARE THE LOSING TEAM!"
This on a Saturday morning, when any good suburbanite should be plopping chocolate chips into pancake batter.
Not the children and parents of Tilden Woods and Hallowell.
It is summer, and this is war -- a war over points and times, yes, but also over pep. The team from Tilden Woods considers itself the most spirited and zealously dedicated in the Montgomery County Swim League. So when the swimmers meet a team such as the Hallowell Hurricanes, which attempts to match them cheer for cheer, they just turn up the volume.
When Hallowell first marched into the pool area, cheering and blaring "We Will Rock You" from a boombox, the oldest Tilden Woods swimmers led the team in a counterattack:
"When I say, 'Go,' you say, 'Fight.' Go!"
"FIGHT!"
"Go!"
"FIGHT!"
Meaning everyone's voice was hoarse before the meet even started.
Eight Weeks of PepThere is no town square in Tilden Woods -- a maze of homes and lush lawns between Rockville and North Bethesda -- so the community pool is the magnet for activity. And for eight weeks every summer, the neighborhood lives there. No, really.
There are two three-hour meets a week, five hours of practice each of the other days, Friday night pep rallies, a yearly sleepover and talent show at the pool, plus happy hours and poker nights for the adults -- all in the service of the Tilden Woods Dolphins, those 5- to 18-year-old rabble-rousers of the Montgomery County Swim League.
The league, in its 48th season, is made up of 90 neighborhood teams sorted into 15 skill divisions, and the parents do everything. They are the timers, scorers, referees and organizers. They make and sell the snacks and refreshments. At the yearly relay meet, the parents even swim. At Tilden Woods, a trio of dads records every triumph and tragedy for the team Web site and year-end DVD.
"Once swim season starts, that's all you do," said Andy Ship, one of the team photographers, parent to 9-year-old Hannah and social worker at the McLean School of Maryland. "It's like another full-time job, but you're doing it with your family. By the time it's over, everybody's glad because we're all exhausted. It's 24/7 for eight weeks."
The swimmers, meanwhile, occupy themselves with the science of the "psych-out." They paint their faces and bodies like they're extras on a Mel Gibson movie set. For away meets, the team decorates cars, then caravans to the enemy pool; if the route includes a highway, the coaches go out the night before and lodge blue plastic cups in the chain-link fence of an overpass to spell "GO TW!" And, of course, there is that extensive cheer repertoire.
"I have never been in a happier place than at Tilden Woods on a Saturday morning," said coach Nick Kaufman, 22. "The emotions just run so high."
Their spirit has fueled a charge through the league ranks, from divisions F, G and H several years ago into the elite Division A last year. Now it's the perfect blend: high spirit for high rivalry. At every meet, families perch on the edges of the pool, vocal cords quaking. Look at the license plate frames on the minivans in the parking lot to see the gestalt neatly defined:
Tilden Woods.
It's a Lifestyle.
Pool PedigreesFlashback: Catherine Ellett starting the Tilden Woods swim team in 1964. There won't be any interest, warns the president of the neighborhood recreation association.
Title card: 42 years later. Ellett's 10-year-old grandson, Bobby, surged down his lane in the 50-meter freestyle at the July 8 meet against Hallowell, which Tilden Woods would end up losing.
"Go, Bobby, go! Go!" bellowed his father, Rob.
Two hundred kids are on the team. Three of them are Elletts.
"I guess it's in the blood," Rob said.
The summer league is more team-oriented than club and school squads, everyone says, mostly because it levies the same responsibility on a 5-year-old as it does on an 18-year-old. Generations eddy through the team. With enough children properly spaced out, a family can be entwined in the league for decades.
Janice Schneider's three kids swim for Tilden Woods. Her aquamarine tank top reads, "dolphin mama."
"I haven't been on vacation in July for 12 years," Schneider said.
Why?
"It would be treason."
So being part of the Tilden Woods pool family is . . . time-consuming.
"It's time-filling. It's time-enriching."
Financially, it can also add up. Families pay $485 to the neighborhood recreation association to belong to the pool and $75 per kid to join the team, plus the incidentals -- the "dolphin mama" tank top, for example.
After halftime, 12 mothers picked up kickboards and led a choreographed dance to Kool and the Gang, courtesy of Alfred "The Wall of Sound" Gabala, who deejays home meets even though his children have outgrown the team.
Gabala's wife, Amy, stopped by. There's a rumor that he'll have to kill the music by 9 p.m. at the adult fiesta that night, she told him.
"Last year it was really, really fun," Amy explained. "And the neighbors got really mad."
Briefs and Belly-FlopsJerry Parshall's underwear speaks volumes. It is a testament to the tradition of spirit handed down from older swimmers to the younger. After 10 years on the team, Parshall has mastered the ecstatic art of being a Dolphin. He dyed his briefs gold (a team color) for the July 15 meet against powerhouse public pool Rockville. "It's about the spirit, the bond," said Parshall, 17, modeling the briefs, which he wore over his Speedo. "It's different for us. Other teams just leave after the meet and don't cheer. Just wait till halftime."
At the halfway point, with Tilden Woods down by 94, Parshall slipped on yellow dishwashing gloves and a black mask, then yelled, flailed and darted around the pool area, trying to spook his nonplussed opponents. At the same time, coach Kaufman (in superhero attire) soared over the side of the pool into a cringe-worthy belly-flop.
The whole Tilden Woods team erupted: "HEY, ROCKVILLE! WE GOT SPIRIT, YES, WE DO! WE GOT SPIRIT, HOW 'BOUT YOU?"
One swimmer from Rockville echoed the cheer, a valiant but futile effort to match Tilden Woods' fervor.
"Tilden Woods coach?" interrupted announcer George Haibel over the loudspeaker. "Can we make an announcement?"
"Yes, sir," said Kaufman, evincing sheepishness and quieting his team.
Other A division teams -- which hone their own styles of team spirit -- have an amused respect for Tilden Woods.
"You can't fault them for it," said Haibel, a Rockville coach and parent. "In Washington, everything's competitive. Tilden Woods has come up from lower divisions, and to get here, they had to have focus. We're a little more laid-back because we've been in A for five years."
Focus during the summer can pay dividends during the school year and beyond. Michael Raab, an all-American swimmer who almost made the 2004 U.S. Olympic team, was a Dolphin from ages 6 to 18 and credits the team with laying the foundation for his career.
"They've just taken it to a new level," said Raab, 23, who drove from his home in Charlottesville for the Rockville meet. "The friendship aspect was always there, but now they've started to win more."
'Spirit-Wise, We Won' Well, last year they were winning more. With the team on a three-meet losing streak, the neighborhood caravaned to Olney for the division championship yesterday. On the way, they passed the coaches, who stood on a Route 97 median, swooping giant "TW" flags.
In the pool parking lot at 7:30 a.m., boisterous Flower Valley swimmers were spray-painting their hair red. At halftime, the team marched up to the Tilden Woods swimmers and engaged them in one of those unending scream-offs.
Sensing a stalemate, the two sides quieted, conspired and then launched a joint cheer against Hallowell across the pool.
After four hours of this (and some swimming), the final scores were tallied. Tilden Woods took third place out of six teams -- a strong showing, sure, but still just one part of a vast summer experience.
"We came here today having absolutely surpassed what was expected of us," Kaufman told his team. "What a great season. Today, spirit-wise, we won."
But the last meet isn't the last of anything.
There's a team banquet today.
An adult happy hour Aug. 11.
A kids movie and s'mores night Aug. 25.
Even the swimmers' dogged work at the championships was a prelude to more play last night. They planned to stay up till dawn, cooking out, looking back and holding their breath for next summer, and the summer after that, and the summer after that . . .