Cherry Bowl goes golden
By ROBERT LINNEHAN
The Cherry Hill Sun
7/24/2009

Legendary local swimmers from the past will flock to the Haddontowne Swim Club this weekend for the 50th annual Cherry Bowl Swimming Championship.

Seven hundred and fifty athletes from 13 local Cherry Hill swim clubs will be participating in the competition and will be eagerly waiting the unveiling of the all-time Cherry Bowl team.

The event will be held on Saturday, July 25 and is co-hosted by the Charleston and Haddontowne Swim Clubs.

The swim meet festivities will start at 9 a.m. About 550 to 600 of the best swimmers from ages 6 to 18 will put on their swim caps and goggles to compete in the preeminent swimming competition in Cherry Hill.

Following tradition, the 13 swim clubs participating in the event will parade around the pool in costume for the event’s theme.

Haddontowne will have the event at its swim club because of space limitations at the Charleston Swim Club.

The opening ceremonies will begin at 9:15 a.m., with the parade following shortly after at 9:20 a.m. The first event of the Cherry Bowl will start at 9:45 a.m. There’s a $5 admission fee per spectator.

About 2,000 spectators, 500 to 550 swimmers, and over 200 volunteers are expected to be at the Haddontowne Swim Club for the event.

Parking will not be allowed at the swim club itself for spectators, but parking is allowed at nearby James Johnson Elementary School at 500 Kresson.

It’s a walk of about two or three blocks to the swim club.

Being the 50th anniversary, the Cherry Bowl will be unveiling the all- time Cherry Bowl team, made up of the top performers from the swim competition’s past.

Current record holders of the 66 events will march with the swim clubs during the opening parade.

“So far we’ve got about 42 or 43 of the current record holders coming back to the event. The Cherry Bowl keeps track of the record holders year by year. We asked each swim club to get in touch with as many of the record holders as they could,” Co-Chair of the Cherry Bowl Tom Karpousis said. “It runs the gamut really. Some of the record holders are current swimmers, but we’ve got some who are attending the event that go back as far as 30 years ago. We even have a family traveling all the way from Vermont.”

Mark J. Oberstaedt of the Haddontowne Swim Club is also a co-chair of the meet.

The event will also have a tent dedicated to the past 50 years of the event, with memorabilia on display dating as far back as the inaugural competition.

Attendants can see the very first Cherry Bowl trophy featured from 1960, Karpousis said, as well as Cherry Bowl programs dating back to the 1970s, Cherry Bowl t-shirts from the past 13 years, and pictures of the original team that won the very first Cherry Bowl.

The traditional event typically invokes playful, but semi-serious, rivalries between the 13 swim clubs and their surrounding neighborhoods.

Even residents living in the different neighborhoods take pride in how their local clubs perform at the Cherry Bowl, Karpousis said, and root on the local swimmers during the swim meet.

Swimming is the only sport in the world where a seven or eight-year- old swimmer can be just as valuable as an 18-year-old swimmer, Karpousis said.

"I have seen situations where I have a 6-foot tall, 18-year-old freshman in college congratulating my 8-old-son and telling him that the team really needed his great swim during that meet. It’s a very unique thing.

“It’s the only sport that I know of where that relationship can exist,” he said. “For my 8-year-old, for any kid, that’s the thrill of their life.”

The event can go upwards of seven hours, Karpousis said. It will be run through the help of the 200 volunteers who have been working since last summer to pull the event together.

“There have been volunteers working on this throughout the year,” he said.

“Both communities have put a tremendous amount of work and time into making this event happen.”

For more information, please visit Cherrybowl.org.