Prep swimmers DQ'd for shaving at meet

Can you imagine being the preps reporter who was assigned this story?

I think I would have quit halfway through the conversation.

 

Public pools require swimmers to shower before they can swim. Most locker rooms have signs posted banning shaving, though I always thought it was because of state laws regarding public use of razors rather than the NFHS.

Pretty much all the club swimmers are shaved and tapered before big meets. Even the high school swim teams around here have shaving parties instead of, or in addition to, the traditional pasta parties before big meets.

I'm just confused about why the county title was yanked retroactively. Wouldn't the violation have to be discovered at the meet, and the swimmer/team penalized immediately and on site rather than after the fact?

 

This post is worthless without pictures

 

The story is not relevant because high school swimming is not relevant.

It, along with tennis and golf, are idiotic because the best "teams" and "athletes" have nothing to do with the high school, not even a little.

The best high school swimming team around here has a bunch of kids - who all practice at Pitt with all the rest of the best swimmers in the area - and they never actually practice with their teams.

Ditto the best tennis team and golf team.

People can hate high school football or basketball, but at least the teams practice together and play together as high school teams during the season and thus they are actually, you know, high school teams as opposed to collections of athletes who train elsewhere.

 

I think many basketball players play on club or travel teams that would beat the pants off their high school team.

You're left with football, zag.

 

You got that right. One of my writers just got some hate mail from a swim parent. I do as little about swimming as I can get away with.

 

Which is apropos of nothing. It's relevant to the participants. High school sports are about participation of the masses, and the ties between the local school and an area's citizens. Who cares if the so-called "best" don't compete in some of the sports. For 99.9 percent of the high school athletes who won't get a scholarship and who won't play a sport in college, prep sports are about the experience, about being on a team, competing with the teammates you've had since youth sports, etc., and the benefits derived from that experience.

So actually, it's the club teams that aren't relevant to anyone but the parents, and to the college coaches who recruit the 1 percent of high school kids who may get some sort of athletic financial aid. No one here in the general public gives a hoot about the local swim or soccer club. But yes, they do care about the local high school teams in the same sports, and many who do not have a relative on the teams attend games/meets because the competitors represent the local school and by extension, their community.

 

THis is why club teams, except the college bball summer leagues, aren't covered.

 

My kid swims for a shitty high school swim team. They have a couple of stud freshman coming in who compete at the national age group level. They pretty much practice with their club, will swim for the high school. Heck, if our shitty high school can beat the perennial league power with a couple of club kids, why would I care? The studs go to our high school.

It, along with tennis and golf, are idiotic because the best "teams" and "athletes" have nothing to do with the high school, not even a little. Except that they go to the high school.

 

And the 7-on-7 passing leagues are starting to chew away at football too.

Well, for now. We've gotten fiery phone calls demanding full game coverage for club teams, in every fuckin' sport under the sun (all of which have one thing in common: Nobody nobody nobody besides parents of the players ever goes to games. Spectator interest among the public at large is Zero Point Zero Zero Zero).

As soon as those fiery phone calls start getting through to Mr. Publisher, that battle will be lost too.

We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And *I* will make them pay for what they've done.

 

Every year in the Pennsylvania state meet, you have kids placing who don't even have a high school team, just a good Y team they work out with. Their school has nothing to do with them being a swimming champion.

 

The club-sports vs. school-sports argument doesn't have much or anything to do with the main topic of this thread, so in the interests of getting off the threadjack and back on track,

1) The rule does have a good reason, i.e. the discouraging of sharing razors;

2) It does raise the question, who snitched? Although at a major event such as a state meet, it's not unlikely swimmers from many different schools might have been in the same locker room at the same time.

3) Since it's generally accepted that shaving is somewhat beneficial (although I have also heard some coaches say its effect is infinitesimal at best), if I were a male swimming coach dealing with female swimmers, I would delegate the entire topic to the female assistant coach all such coaches must have to avoid Poin Files suspicion, with the direction: "Talk about it once, tell them to do it at home on their own, and after that we don't want to hear about it again."

As a male head coach of a female HS sports team, I would want plausible deniability that I had ever discussed the subject of what to do about their body hair.