There are two entities for which I can claim a rather thorough distaste for: the AS Roma soccer club and St. Olaf. More specifically with that MIAC school, it’s the swimming and diving squad that I cannot stand. Which is all rather ironic to me; I’m a diver and divers are not supposed to get passionately competitive since we’re typically a pretty chill bunch. Not so with Olaf. This personal animus goes beyond the team-wide ultra-rivalry with them (which I will get to later). My father swam for St. Olaf back in the 1970s. Same thing with my aunt. My sister dove for them last year. This makes me the black sheep of the family and the recipient of Gustavus put-downs…which rather annoys me.
So if only in the name of familial peace, I’d rather see Gustavus do well. But it goes beyond that. The St. Olaf swimming and diving team is essentially the same as ours–except they don’t really have fun. Or at least don’t act like it. We wear our hearts on our sleeve and honestly, we are goofballs to some extent. A story to illustrate this. When I was a freshman, our team trooped off to faraway Steven’s Point, WI for a rather important two day invitational. Now that’s a lot of time and well, the men’s squad cooked up a bit of fun for the second day. Before the final session began, en masse we participated in a little synchronized swimming routine that we cooked up the previous night. The crowd loved it. Well, most of the crowd. There was one group that disagreed: the St. Olaf men’s team, who had the temerity to boo.
That’s just not cool. So off I go, leaving y;all with a nifty little acronym that I won’t deign to explain out of concern for the sensibilities of some reading this: BAFO.