Women's Swimming
 

last updated 11/02/2009

Steph Jeppesen's Journal of her trip to Fairbanks, Ak.

Thursday October 29

Today is the day. We are all excited to go to Alaska. We though the journey was going to be a long one. We took three separate flights to get there, Minneapolis, Anchorage and Fairbanks. I think our total flying time was around 10 hours, but the entire time of travel came to 15 hours. Flying over the Yukon Territory with snow covered mountains and lakes with icebergs was an incredible sight. It looked like a picture on a postcard. When we finally got to Fairbanks, we headed straight to the hotel and dropped off our luggage. Soon after we got settled in we made our way to the pool and swam about 2,500 yards to stretch out and get acquainted with the pool. After working up an appetite, we stopped at the local Pizza Hut. It was tricky to deal with wet hair in 19-degree weather. My hair literally froze into icicles. At the restaurant, (Kutztown head swimming) coach (Tim) Flannery read the meet line-up for the whole weekend. We knew we had a big task ahead of us and coach’s expectations were high. After being awake for over 24 hours, none of us had any problems falling asleep by 10 p.m. local time, which was 2 a.m. Pennsylvania time!

Friday October 30

Waking up at 8 a.m. with no daylight is strange. The sun didn’t rise until after 9:30 a.m. just as we were finishing breakfast. After a day of visiting the University Bookstore for some souvenirs and relaxing in and around the hotel, we left for the pool at 4 p.m. We were all amped to win and coach motivated us by saying “we didn’t travel across the country to lose!” After winning the first event, we knew we were off to a good start. From then on we kept a winning streak throughout the whole meet. We even ended on a high and unusual note. Our two free relay teams tied for first place, something we have never seen happen before! We trekked through the snow to our vans and headed back to our warm hotel beds to rest up for another tough meet in the morning.  

Saturday October 31

Happy Halloween Fairbanks! We got up for another exciting day in the pool. Arriving at 10 a.m. to warm-up, we joined the UAF girl’s team in congratulating their seniors for their recognition ceremony. Before the meet began, we all ran outside in our bathing suits to take some KU team pictures in the snow. The meet started out with another medley relay victory, this one was closer than the day before. After that, KU won seven of the 11 events, swimming to another win. As we shook hands with the Nanooks, they presented us each with a fuzzy polar bear with Alaska and KU ribbons on it. Coach was happy with the win and we all decided to travel the 56 miles east to the Chena Hot Springs. It’s pretty unbelievable that you can find hot springs of up to 110 degrees while the air temperature was below 20 degrees. The water was so hot it burned our feet and hands especially when we walked through the snow to get in. Although moose were known to be seen near the springs, we didn’t see any. The comfort of the springs literally put us to sleep on our ride back to the hotel where we prepared for the long trip home.

--KU--