By Andrew Ross
Back with Bizzaro Sports again. As usual, this is all made-up. The people in this story are real, but their actions and words are not. And thank god for that.
-Gauntlet Sports Staff
Megan Kinsella can at last dry her tears. The beleaguered Dinos swimmer, whose team came in second at Guelph last month, has renewed hopes for next year’s Nationals. The source of this optimism: none other than renowned international music star Yanni.
Yanni, who broke the Greek National swimming record for the 50m freestyle at the age of 15, has come on board as the new swimming Head Coach at University of Calgary.
"Most people don’t know that Yanni can swim too," said Yanni. "They just think of Yanni as a pianist and composer, a performer and a guy with really great hair. But there is more to Yanni than that."
Former Olympian and Dino Rick Say agreed.
"That man’s got damn nice hair. That’s all I’m gonna say about that."
The new coach was hired in the wake of former coach Mike Blondal’s sudden "retirement." University President Terry White offered a vague explanation.
"I, uh, gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse."
Blondal could not be reached for comment, but the message on his answering machine has been changed to "Blondal, uh, sleeps with the fishes. Uh, don’t bother to leave a message."
"Yeah, it’s kinda weird how he [Blondal] just disappeared like that," said swimmer Julia Wright. "But I think it’ll just make us more determined to give UBC a spanking at Nationals. Besides, Yanni is doing a pretty good job filling in. He’s composing some inspirational music for us, and Jonathan [Fowler] knows the guy at the pool so we can sneak it in."
Yanni, who brought his trademark three keyboards to his first practice, explained his decision to return to the world of swimming.
"Yanni got to a point with the music where Yanni just couldn’t get any better. On my last album, Yanni wrote, arranged, performed, recorded, mixed, produced and engineered the entire CD. Hell, Yanni did everything but put the discs into those little cases. So I knew it was time to take on a new challenge, and swimming was the obvious choice."
Unfortunately, as a graduate student at U of C (Yanni is pursuing his MA in Psychology–he recieved his BA from Minnesota State), he wasn’t eligible to swim on the team, so coaching was the next best thing. That, and the pool water is really harsh on his hair.
Megan Kinsella may not have hair as nice as her new coach’s, but the swimmer voted "most like Scary Spice" is not jealous.
"Yanni’s hair is like a symbol; it represents how we will flaunt our superiority over UBC when we beat them like the bad, bad donkeys they are," quoth Kinsella.
When asked about her predictions for Nationals, Kinsella simply replied, "obviously we’re going to win every single race all weekend, and we’ll probably get a lot of 1-2-3 finishes too. Basically, we’re going to swim so fast you won’t even be able to see us."