The Point of Stevens Point

Stevens Point, Wisconsin, population 26,000, is in central Wisconsin, nowhere near Lake Michigan. The Wisconsin River runs through it, but I can't find a "point" anywhere.

Oh, there it is.  SPASH, Stevens Point Area High School, full of swimmers of prodigious ability.

So many that I had to split up the photos.

















Plus wrestlers, bodybuilders, and miscellaneous athletes.













Famous former residents include Joel Hodgson (Mystery Science Theater 3000), Kathy Kinney (The Drew Carey Show), and professional wrestler Ben Provisor.

I like the biceps and bulge, but not the tats and tongue.

Stevens Point is also the home of a branch of the University of Wisconsin, which has its own coterie of swimmers of prodigious capacity.













And wrestlers, bodybuilders, bikers, and bodybuilding wrestlers who compete in bikeathons.















This is a junior high boy, and probably not an athlete, but I couldn't resist the photo.  Pink button-down shirt, striped tie, pink carrying case at his feet. I'm guessing that he'll spend his teen years looking for the point of Stevens Point.

A Long, Strange Trip in Search of Physiques

Weird meanderings in the world of internet physique photos:

1. I was searching for "Napoli nuoto" when this photo of "some of the veteran members of the Medina swim team," in an article dated November 2017.

It was mostly girls, but there were two boys with their arms around each other on the right side. I liked the blond nerd with the horn-rimmed glasses.  Too young to be attractive in a romantic way, but eliciting an "awwww" reaction, like a puppy dog.

 I don't know what it has to do with Naples, Italy, but there's a Medinah in Illinois and a Medina in Ohio, named during the Middle Eastern fad of the 19th century.

Medina, where Mohammed settled when he had to flee Mecca, is the second most holy city in Islam.  The first mosque he established, Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, is an important pilgrimage site.













2. So I searched for "Medina Boys Swim Team" and "Ohio," and got "The Olympian Eagles soar."


Nice chest.

Olympian High School is in Chula Vista, a suburb of San Diego.  Sort of far from Medinah, Illinois or Medina, Ohio

3, Back to Medina again.  The Cloverleaf Colts are doing "swimmingly" this year.

Mostly girls, but I like how the coach is standing in the water along with the others.

And naming a swim team "The Colts"?  Not as bad as the Eagles, I suppose.

The Cloverleaf Colts are from Lodi, a village about 15 miles south of Medina, Ohio.   It's the site of the Northern Ohio Railroad Museum and the Hidden Hollow Camp.

4. Hidden Hollow Camp sounds like a good place to find photos of muscular counselors, but I don't find anything good except this sign.

Are horses, like, dangerous?  Do they jump out of bushes and bite you?

5. And this photo of a wrestling team from Middlesex, New Jersey.

What did these names Middlesex, Wessex, Sussex, andEssex originally mean?  Surely not "sex."

It's a corruption of Seax or Saxon, so "Middle Saxon Territory" and so on.

Fun fact: seax is also the Old English word for "knife."

6. Searching for "Medina seahorses," I find a lot of photos of seahorses.  Plugging in "swim team," I get these two guys gazing longingly at each other.

Score!  Gay guys!  They're on the swim team of the St. Christopher School in Richmond, Virginia.

7.  Here are some more St. Christopher School swimmers.  I like the guy with the chest hair.

Wait -- wasn't St. Christopher de-canonized by the Catholic Church?

According to Catholic Online, he's still one of the more popular saints, the patron of travelers, gardeners, toothaches, storms, and bachelors.

Bachelors?  Maybe he's a patron of gay men,too.

I love Richmond, Virginia.  Jimmy, the bodybuilder on crutches who I dated back in grad school, ended up there.  Lots of interesting historic buildings.  There's actually a whole website devoted to Buildings We Love in Richmond.

This week it's the William H. Grant House, built in 1857 for the wealthy tobacco merchant, then turned into the Sheltering Arms Hospital.

I wonder if William H. Grant is related to Ulysses S. Grant? I check WIkipedia.  Ulysses was born in Ohio, and fought for the Union army during the Civil War.  Probably not.

8.  Back to the puppy-dog-cute swimmer from the Medina Seahorses.  Using the exact words, I found this photo from November 2018.   A year makes a big difference -- he's got some abs, and his head is no longer too big for his body.

The article says: "Seahorses prepping for N-O swim season," and it's from Orleans Online, ." N.O. must be "New Orleans."  So there must be a town of Medina near New Orleans.

9.  Nope, no Medina town, township, high school, or anything else in New Orleans except.  But the photo caption lists the players' names, so I can search on Facebook until I find one with a town listed.

Medina, New York.  Who knew there was another one?  A small town, actually advertised on Google Maps with a picture of a hamburger.  Not even appetizing.

N-O stands for Niagara-Orleans Conference.  Medina is about 40 miles east of Niagara Falls, in Orleans County.

Maybe named after Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans during the War of 1812 (a decisive victory over the British that made him a national hero and ensured that he would win the the 1828 presidential election). 

Or the House of Orleans, the ruling dynasty of France during the era of the Sun King.

France hasn't been a kingdom for 150 years, but the House of Orleans still has pretenders to the throne.  It's Jean-Carl Pierre Marie d’Orléans, born in 1965.  I wonder what he does for a living....

Oh, well, back to Medina

10. Searching for "Medina New York Swim Team" yeilds more teenagers with abs, and the title "Jaguars clinch WIAA swim sectionals."

I'm not gong to look up Jaguars.

I'm not going to look up Jaguars.

I'm not...well, maybe just a little.

Brother Rice Catholic High School: A Bevy of Manly Swimmers

"Brother Rice High School: Act Manfully in Christ Jesus."

I'm all for acting manfully, especially if these are the guys who are doing the acting. 

Brother Rice is "Chicagoland's Premiere Catholic All-Male College Preparatory School."

I'm all for that "all-male" part,too.

In case you were wondering, Brother Rice was an Irish businessman who became a monk after his wife died, and devoted himself to the education of poor youth. He was beatified in 1996.  The order he founded, the Christian Brothers, runs schools all over the world.  Two are named after Brother Rice himself, in Chicago and a suburb of Detroit, Michigan.

There are also Edmund Rice camps for at-risk, homeless, and refugee children, in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Ireland, the United States, India, and throughout Africa. .

This one is in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

But back to Brother Rice High School: It's on the southwest side, on Pulaski Road and 99th, 18 miles from the Loop, a high-poverty, high-crime neighborhood.  In the same block as a girls' high school and Saint Xavier University.

It seems rather gay-friendly, for a Catholic high school.  No slurs based on "race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or religion" are tolerated.

There's a Diversity Club where students "develop skills in dealing with issues of race, discrimination, sexuality, and prejudice."

It's the alma mater of Brian McNaught, author of On Being Gay (1986), one of the first gay books I ever read, and out actor Denis O'Hare (American Horror Story).

So, are there any guys acting manfully around?

A lot of swimmers.  Brother Rice prides itself on the excellence of the swim team.











So many swimmers, you'd have to work three 8-hour days to interview them all.  I count 22 here, but some are hidden.

Not so many wrestlers, but you don't need many, as long as they're posed appropriately to show off their biceps and bulges. 

These cross-country runners may be acting manfully, but they're not showing off their physiques.  They may be from the wrong Brother Rice anyway -- the one in Chicago has Crusaders, not Warriors.

And so many swimmers....