“The atmosphere and the crowd cheering was just mesmerizing.”

Every 4 years, the summer air during the months of July and August is filled with the buzz of excitement throughout the world because of the most famous tournament ever, the Olympics. If lucky, one may be able to experience this ambience in person. Loyola had multiple members of our community show their national pride at this tournament like Matthew Schaeffer, who was captured on TV celebrating team USA making the water polo semi finals; and Marco Vavic ‘18, representing his country in water polo and pushing them to the semi-finals with the game winning five-meter; and the spotlight of this article, Declan and Hudson McGough ‘25, who both worked with the USA’s track team.

When asked how they worked with the track team, Hudson said “We shadowed people working there, so we got to see how they work with the friends and families of the olympians. It was cool to see how the people dealt with getting tickets for spouses, kids, mothers, fathers, ect., and how they dealt with day to day problems.”

Hudson continued, “There was this one amazing story where this one Javelin showed up randomly at the door of one of the people we shadowed. They had to call around, and figure out who’s javelin it was, if they were allowed to bring it into the building, and who to send it to.”

“Even though some people may say track, the coolest event in my opinion was Ping-pong” Declan responded about his favorite event. “It is heavily slept on as an event. The atmosphere and the whole crowd as they chanted and cheered at every point and every rally was mesmerizing.”

The Twins spent a total of 2 weeks in Paris, getting to go around from event to event like mentioned track & field and ping pong, but also soccer, volleyball, and tennis. Paris, being one of the prettiest cities in the world, gave the twins much to see while traveling from event to event.

Many may think that they used the train, a taxi, or Uber, but “electric bikes were by far the best and most efficient form of transportation.”

“Our time at the Olympics was probably  the coolest thing we have ever done. We were lucky to see so many events during the two weeks. Altogether, especially with being Paris, it’s up there as our greatest experience ever.”