The Arrowhead girls’ swim team held the 24-hour relay fundraiser from August 28 to August 29 at the Arrowhead pool.

The Arrowhead swim team girls have held this event for eight years annually. The week before school starts on a Wednesday, all of the girls on the team gathered at the pool to start the 24-hour relay.

The 24-hour relay has a group of four or five girls in the pool at all times, swimming. This is done so they can raise money for the scholarship that is given out at the end of the year to two seniors.

The way that the money for the scholarship is raised is through other people. Before the actual event takes place, the girls have to find at least one person to donate money.

Some of the donors give a dollar or two for each lap that is swum and other donors just give a lump sum for each of the hour time slots that the girls swim.

The team does a competition by holding a raffle after the money is all collected. The top five girls with the most money win a prize.

Who the scholarship money goes to depends on the coaches and the activities office.

This is not the only reason that they hold the 24-hour relay, though. Every year, the team goes out and collects as many canned goods as they can find.

The team divides into five teams with two seniors leading each and they go out into the local neighborhoods and collect as many cans as they can.

The team collected 3,241 canned goods this year, more than any of the other years.

The canned goods go to the local Hartland pantry and are given to the less fortunate.

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Junior Galen Harte, a swimmer who has been on the team for three years has participated in this event every year. Harte says, “My favorite memory of the event throughout the years is the time when the JV swimmers all sat in the study hall and played the questions game. We bonded that night.”

During the first hour of the relay, the Varsity swimmers are in the pool for practice (as well as the first four or five swimmers that start off the relay).

After practice, everyone grabs their sleeping bags and pillows and phone chargers so they can spend the night at Arrowhead with the team.

For the rest of the night the girls eat dinner and start the planned team activities.

Some of these activities are a scavenger hunt, blob tag, and a fun game that the team leaders, who are normally seniors, came up with.

The scholarship is one of the important reasons that the 24 hour relay is held.

The Stacey Meyer scholarship has been in swimming for ten years now, ever since a young JV member was driving home and was in a fatal car crash and died. The scholarship is named in her remembrance.

Two seniors are awarded this scholarship. Each receives a little over $1,000 dollars, depending on how much money is raised during the 24 hour relay.

“Our team is more like a family than a team, we love and support each other no  matter what. Even the new freshman are treated like a part of this family,” Harte said.