The rallying cry came loud and clear over the sound system: “Let’s go get freezin’ for a reason!”
And with that, more than 300 people voluntarily plunged themselves into the 34-degree water of Nippersink Lake from Fox Lake’s Lakefront Park on Sunday.
“It’s a good adrenaline rush,” said Henri Krueger, 33, of Gurnee.
The antics were for a good cause.
It was the annual Polar Plunge held each year to raise money for the Illinois Special Olympics.
The Special Olympics organization has held the event for 18 years across the state, and the Fox Lake plunge is one of 22 throughout Illinois in 2017, said Alexandra McMillin, assistant director of communications and media relations for the nonprofit.
The Fox Lake event alone raised more than $66,700 this year for the Special Olympics, which serves 2,000 athletes in Lake and McHenry counties and 22,000 across Illinois, McMillin said.
The athletes compete in 19 different sports at 180 competitions throughout the year in the area.
The Special Olympics’ mission is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition to children and adults with intellectual disabilities, according to the organization’s website.
The nonprofit also serves children without intellectual disabilities.
The Fox Lake plunge “gets bigger and bigger every year, which is awesome,” McMillin said.
The sunny weather and temperature in the mid-40s made for milder conditions than in years past, but plungers still dealt with strong gusts of wind as they shivered out of the water and toward their towels.
“It was freezing,” said Ryan Wollberg, 34, of Wauconda. “(The warmer weather) doesn’t make it easier.”
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Wollberg, an assistant principal at Emmons Grade School in Antioch, said it was his sixth or seventh plunge, all of them in Fox Lake, and called the mission of the Special Olympics “inspirational.”
“It’s a great cause,” Wollberg said.
Participants were required to raise a minimum of $100 to qualify for the plunge. In return, they received a hooded sweatshirt and entrance into a post-event party — in addition to bragging rights.
Krueger, who works as a Special Olympics coordinator for the College of Lake County Police Department, recently attended a Special Olympics meet in Lake Zurich, he said.
“When you see what a good time the athletes have, it’s a really cool thing,” he said.
It was Krueger’s fifth plunge, all in Fox Lake.
The plunge was personal for Heather Holtz, 30, of Round Lake Beach. It was her first time participating in the event.
She has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder that she said is similar to muscular dystrophy, and she participated in the Special Olympics for 23 years, she said, competing in figure skating, cross-country skiing, basketball and rhythmic gymnastics.
“Jumping today was really the icing on the cake,” Holtz said. “I was always the kid who was told, ‘You can’t, you can’t.’ Today, I’m proving them wrong and taking the ‘dis’ out of ‘disability.'”
Twitter @lucashammill