On your marks. Set. Beep. The swimmers are off, swimming the fifty freestyle. Revere senior Flynn Cowie keeps a consistent lead from the beginning to the finish line. Lane three, Cowie, takes home first place for his first event of the day, winning by a full 0.78 seconds. After the event finishes, the swimmers take a ten minute break, but Cowie does not leave the pool and continues to swim a few more laps to be ready for his next event. 

Flynn Cowie stays active at Revere and outside of Revere. In the summer and fall, the senior occupies his time with marching band, in the winter on the swim team and the variety show, in the spring on the track team, and finds time for other hobbies like hacky sack and his involvement in the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. 

Cowie became part of the Revere district his freshman year and has been part of the swim team for all four years of high school. Along with swimming during the winter season, Cowie participates during the summer with the Firestone Area Swim Team (FAST). This year, Cowie is co-captain with fellow senior Jackson Campbell. Cowie spoke of one of his favorite moments during the swim season. 

“In the winter time we have double practices, so we practice in the morning and the afternoon and that used to be a lot of fun, everybody hated being there, but it was good for the whole team,” Cowie said. 

Cowie helped to motivate the team as captain and helped new coach Mark DiSalvo adjust to a new position. DiSalvo was a collegiate swimmer and is father to junior swimmer Abby DiSalvo. This is his first year as a coach, and he spoke on how Cowie has helped with this new role. 

“Helping me get to know the kids, giving me some background on the team from years past was really helpful. . . He’s a pleasure to coach; he works really hard and does whatever it takes to get better which makes my job really easy,” DiSalvo said.

DiSalvo also mentioned that Cowie steps up in his leadership position as co-captain. 

“He does a great job helping organize team activities, picking swimmer of the week and making it about the team. . .He’s a great kid, willing to work hard on anything that’s asked of him,” DiSalvo said. 

Cowie hopes to pursue his swimming career into college, more specifically at Kenyon College and talked about what he is doing to try and be accepted into the school for swimming.

“I want to swim in college. I’ve been trying to drop times because I’ve been trying to fit a specific time slot. I have to swim a specific time in the fifty free to go to swim in college, so I’ve been trying to get that. If I don’t, I’ll probably swim [for a] club [team] because I love swimming in general,” Cowie said. 

DiSalvo, who has experience at the collegiate level, mentioned that he believes Cowie is “fast enough to swim at a high level in college.”

Cowie’s favorite event is the fifty free, he explained, because it is fast and what he believes to be his best event. 

“Fifty freestyle is my favorite because it’s a fun event and it’s one that I’ve seen the most success in. . . I could go to States for the fifty free,” Cowie said. 

With practices every weekday and two meets a week, Cowie keeps busy, but he adds more to his plate with Revere’s variety show. 

The variety show is a type of talent show with different acts and a general theme for the show. Cowie was part of the show his sophomore year (2019-2020) as a host with fellow sophomore at the time Nathan Phan. The theme that year was “The End of a Decade,” and the two created a small skit and poster for each decade to introduce the next act. For the last act, the two went through the whole decade and had not planned anything, this moment formed one of Cowie’s favorite memories from the whole show. 

“Nathan and I were hosting, and we didn’t have anything for the last set because we went through the whole decade, so we asked somebody to come up from the crowd and we just talked to them and the person was really funny. . . we were asking him what he wanted to achieve in this new year and he said ‘get a girlfriend’ and it was just [the] best moment ever,” Cowie said. 

Every year in the variety show, there is a band that usually consists of seniors that play specifically for the show. During Cowie’s junior year (2020-2021), he was a part of the band, playing the guitar, but COVID prevented him from performing that year. His junior year, the band included two other juniors, Lawrence Saltis and Claire Palopoli, and the three wanted to continue the band for their senior year. 

“We had a band last year that I was unable to be a part of because of COVID, so we had this idea that we were all going to join a band because me, Lawrence and Claire were all part of that band last year. We just needed to find a drummer and a bass player, so we kind of started it two, three months ago,” Cowie said. 

The band now consists of Cowie, Saltis, Palopoli, Phan and Adam Stumbaugh. For the variety show, the band plans on playing covers with their tight timeframe but will hope to expand later in the year. Cowie explained what type of music the band plays. 

“We’re playing a lot of alternative rock, indie kind of stuff like that. We’re going all over the board because a lot of us have different music tastes, but it’s still just generally fun music,” Cowie said. 

Fellow senior and guitar player Palopoli is in many shared interests as Cowie including swimming and the band. Palopoli initially filled in for Cowie their junior year and the two are now both essential to the band. Palopoli explained the dynamic among her and Cowie and the whole band. 

“Flynn and I definitely complement each other guitar wise. There are some arguments of course-we all have different music tastes-but when we all come together, it sounds really good,” Palopoli said. 

Even though the band was only created specifically for the variety show, the five seniors hope to continue their music during the summer. Cowie explained the band’s plan for the summer to get more coverage. 

“We’re going to, this summer, have a bunch of summer parties where the band plays and we just invite a bunch of people to a house and play in front of everybody. But besides that, we haven’t done anything, but we’re planning to,” Cowie said. 

Although Cowie does not see the band continuing into anything more than just a fun summer and variety show group, he still joined the band for the sole reason of his love for music. Cowie goes into further detail on why he decided to be a part of the band.

“I love music in a lot of ways, and it’s really helped me, and being able to play the songs I hear on the radio and being able to play what I want to play and create music with that whole group; all the people in it are really nice people, so I just enjoy being a part of that group and making music because making music is so fun,” Cowie said. 

Director of the variety show and English teacher Amy Fagnilli has been part of the show for more than ten years and has known Cowie since he was in her freshman year history class. Fagnilli explained that even though Cowie has immense talent in the music field, his personality is what really stands out. 

“He’s a very charismatic and kind person. I think the thing that most people notice about him is that he’s a generous and kind individual and then on top of that, he’s really smart. He’s super talented as a musician, but it’s his personality that wins people over,” Fagnilli said.

Not only does Cowie play guitar in a band, but he is also part of the Revere Marching Band and plays trumpet. Cowie has been in the marching band all four years of high school and has also held leadership positions. This year, Cowie holds the title as band president and explained how he climbed to this rank. 

“My freshman year, I saw the people in the band and thought ‘that’s so cool how they’re able to do that; there’s no way I’d be able to do that,’ and then my sophomore year I was the sophomore representative and then my junior year I was the secretary and I was like ‘okay, we’re here at this point, and I quite enjoy being able to help people and them being able to help me and just better the whole band in general,’ so that is why I wanted to become the president,” Cowie said. 

As president, Cowie is the leader of band council, where he takes on different responsibilities during band camp in the summer, at football games, at invitationals and during any type of band based event. Cowie further explained his role. 

“I run a couple fundraisers, I’m a positive role model and I lead in a lot of capacities but mainly talking to other bands. We have band council, which is where we go over and talk to everybody, and just during band camp that whole four week process I’m trying to be on top of everybody and make sure everybody’s doing everything correctly and their work,” Cowie said. 

Besides school involvement, Cowie enjoys his mostly secret ability to hacky sack. A hacky sack is a small typically crocheted ball with small pellets inside. To play the game, one passes the hacky sack by foot to another player, and the goal is to keep it in the air. Players can play the game alone or with a group. Cowie explained how he got into this hidden hobby. 

“My dad kind of introduced it to me and we do a lot of art shows in my family, so I help set up, but then I’m there for the whole entire day, it’s like a seven of eight hour thing, so when I was younger, I didn’t have my phone, so what I’d do is I just played hacky sack for the entire time,” Cowie said.

Cowie has been hacky sacking for years now and had a different experience when he went to Michigan for another art show, where he found more people that also shared this hobby. 

“As I got older, I kind of fell out of it and then we started doing art shows again and we went up to Michigan and I stood on a Michigan college campus and I played with like forty different people they were like ‘let’s play’ and I’m like ‘ok’ so you just pass it back and forth,” Cowie said. 

Cowie is also part of a program outside of school called the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. The Leukemia and Lymphoma society is the largest volunteer organization dedicated to fighting blood cancer. Cowie explained what he is doing to help. 

“Basically we’re collecting donations for cancer research towards blood cancer, so all the money that we generate goes to the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. So I’m the head of a group, and I’ve collected fourteen people from Revere, and we’re all going to start campaigning and asking for money and fundraising for this competition that we’re a part of,” Cowie said.

Cowie was also a hurdler for the track team his freshman year but was unable to compete his last two years due to COVID and an injury; he plans to come back for his senior year to finish his high school years strong. Overall, Cowie keeps his schedule packed with sports, band and other different activities, but still finds time to enjoy nature which he values. 

“I have a lot of plants, and I like to hike. [I am a] big nature person, I like nature. I’ve got like fifteen plants, I work at a garden center and just that whole part of me is my favorite because nothing’s better than just going outside and taking a breath of fresh air,” Cowie said.