The swift Terrapin

According to Wikipedia, "the diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) or simply terrapin, is a species of turtle native to the brackish coastal swamps of the eastern and southern United States. It belongs to the monotypic genus, Malaclemys." Nowhere on the Wikipedia page is the speed of the terrapin discussed.

And that brings us to swimming. There is a team, a quite successful team, called the Terrapins. Heck, Natalie Coughlin swam for the Terrapins. And they have cool caps with a picture of the turtle on one side; I think the caps come in orange AND blue. You see them winning heats all day long at these meets.

Naturally, at the last swim meet, I wondered aloud, "is the terrapin a particularly fast turtle or something?" I mean, swim teams are named "sharks" and "baracudas" and "undercurrents" and "halibuts". Not many named after turtles, even particularly fast ones.

Luckily, the Montclair Swim Team's head coach has been around the block a few times and had to answer this many times over the years. As legend has it, the founding coach of the Terrapins was a big Grateful Dead fan and named the team after "Terrapin Station", an album by the band. The team name up until then had been an alphabet soup of district names and clubs sort of like SRVLA but longer.

So, the name has history and some sort of aquatic connection. I guess it could have been the Dancing Bears.