As a high school principal, Mike Devoll has probably been called a lot of names by students, but Tough Mudder is one title that won’t get anyone sent to detention.

Designed by British Special Forces, Tough Mudder is an obstacle course that involves getting a 10,000-volt shock, jumping into a pool of ice cold water, crawling through mud, and other equally horrifying challenges.

On June 1, Devoll and 14 other tri-town residents, all members of Seaside CrossFit, competed in the five-hour, 12-mile obstacle course at Gunstock Mountain Resort in New Hampshire.

Devoll, a Marion resident and principal of Old Rochester Regional High School, said he was never an extreme sports kind of guy.

“I never thought I was someone who would get a rush about doing something like this,” said Devoll.

But working out at Seaside for the past two years, Devoll said the intensive workouts and team atmosphere were good preparation for the race. When a team from the program talked about going to Tough Mudder Boston, Devoll decided to join.

“It’s about the group of people that you do it with,” he said. “We were just making sure that everyone in our group survived.”

Teammate Kate Houdelette, also of Marion, agreed.

“We went into it thinking: we’re not going to win this thing. We’re going to go and have a fun time,” she said.

Houdelette said she and her husband were intimidated by the race, but signed up anyway. “We watched a lot of the videos. It kind of scared us away a little bit,” said Houdelette.

But she said a year of training at CrossFit boosted her confidence.

“One of our coaches, her quote is ‘get comfortable with being uncomfortable.’ [At CrossFit,] you’re doing things you never thought you could do. Regularly, you are pushed to an extreme,” said Houdellete.

At Tough Mudder, those extremes started the moment the team stepped into the humid 90-degree day.

From the beginning, the course was a challenge. “Before we even got to the starting line, we had to scale an eight-foot wall,” said Devoll.

Working as a team, the 15 mudders crawled under barbed wire, scaled a black diamond ski mountain, and got a few jolts running through live wires.

At one point in the event, the team had to jump into the “Arctic Enema,” a pool of muddy ice water. “Leading up to it, it was hot. We kind of thought it would be nice, but it was very shocking,” said Devoll. “You can’t prepare yourself for that.”

Houdellete admitted the icy dive was the most challenging part of the day.

“There’s absolutely nothing you can do to will yourself to jump in the water,” she said. “It took getting out of my head and just jumping in.”

The team’s determination and teamwork got them all to the finish line in one piece, albeit covered in mud.

“A lot of people immediately started to look into doing it again,” said Devoll. “I was so nervous going into it, and then afterwards I said I would do it again – after some recovery.”

Houdelette said she also plans to do another Tough Mudder.

“It was an all for one, one for all life experience,” she said. “When you’ve got a great group of people, you can totally get through it.”