Polar Bear Champions

The perpetual trophy that honors Polar Bear champions since the winter of 1984-1985 was obviously not envisioned to last over twenty years. Perhaps the originator figured that sanity would ultimately prevail and the need for the trophy would fade. Indeed, the trophy case in the Staib Room of the Dolphin Club is littered with "perpetual" trophies that have outlived their usefulness and the memory of why they exist in the first place.

The Polar Bear trophy is not one of these. The brass plates that name the champions and their distance swum once adorned the plaque in regular and symmetrical columns and rows. Not any more. They are tacked in random order onto any available space whether vertical or horizontal. Eventually the plaque must be augmented or replaced, the madness must stop, or the obsessed must go unrecognized. Taken directly from the current haphazard landscape of the trophy and hand-transferred to paper and then to computer, here are the records to date:

I certainly don't expect the madness to stop and it would be a shame to have the obsessed go unrecognized. Perhaps this will be the year that the trophy gets an overhaul.