News : Two Vikes of the Week honored for extreme unselfishness

Vikes of the Week: Brandon Tharp and Steven Kalina.

An ill Viking swimmer who cleaned up a mess that was not his, and a student who provided chili for his entire class are the last Vikes of the week for calendar year 2010.

Brandon Tharp- (Coach Levis)

Coach Levis wrote: "On Tuesday night, we swam in a double-dual meet at Coe College against Linn-Mar and Iowa City West. Just after the meet started, one of the Linn-Mar coaches approached me to let me know that someone had squirted shampoo all over the walls in the men’s locker room. He didn’t accuse us or IC West, but asked me to talk with the boys after the meet. As the meet was nearing the end, and before I had said anything to the team, Brandon went back to the locker room to change. He had been physically ill to the point of throwing up, so he was not going to swim his final event. After the meet, I began to mention the shampoo on the walls when Brandon told me that he had seen it when he went back to change and had cleaned it up. I thanked Brandon for doing that and he said that he didn’t want to see his team blamed for the mess.This is a great representation of the values we want or kids to have and the type of behavior that enables everyone to see the character our guys possess. Here was a young man who had been so ill that he had thrown up, who saw a mess he and his teammates had nothing to do with, but made the effort to clean it up so that it wouldn’t reflect negatively on his team, school or community. You just can't ask for more than that; I could not be more proud of Brandon or our kids.

Steven Kalina (Mrs. Janssen)-

He showed the character trait of kindness and the human spirit. Spending his own money he bought the ingredients to make chili for an entire class.