High school swim team a hairy, yet satisfying, experience

I am a swimmer.

I became a swimmer my freshman year because I needed to participate in a sport to put up a strong defense against the fat girl suppressed inside me who feels a desperate need to show herself.

Now that I’m a junior I wish I could say that I have rose to the top of the team, finish my workouts with ease and weigh 90 pounds. Such is not the case. Swimming has accomplished the feat of keeping me in shape, but I am not good at it — at all. Nonetheless, it is one of highlights of my year and I love it.

After swimming for three years I have become acquainted with the weird traditions, rules and fashions that are an integral part of swim team. Let’s start by explaining the rules. You’d think these at least would be basically the same for every sport, but swimming is not exactly like any other sport.

At Palmer High School, once classes start and the season is officially underway, the girls on the swim team are supposed to stop shaving their legs and no one is supposed to drink soda or eat candy. The candy and soda rule is a bit of a challenge, although I try to adhere to it as stringently as my aching sweet tooth allows.

The unshaven legs part of the deal is almost more than I can bear. Since I have to wear skirts to church and on days we have swim meets at our school, I have invested a lot of money in tights, leggings and long skirts. I have also become more self-conscience about making sure my pants don’t ride up for any reason, lest people notice my manly legs and I have to explain the swim team rule.

There really is a reason for this rule. Not shaving builds up drag over time, so during practice you are swimming more slowly than you would without the hair. At the end of the season, everyone shaves so they achieve their fastest times at the last meet. This strange ritual of swim team is called “the shave-down party.”

I had the privilege of shaving down with the team at regions last year in a small motel in Homer. Nearly everyone on the team broke out bottles of shaving cream, various razors and depilatories, put on swimsuits and began to shave. After having this slightly odd experience, I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything more bizarre than my boyfriend, in his swim trunks, shaving his legs with the help of a male member of our swim team.

Some girls who are not quite masculine enough to go without shaving for upwards of two months dodge this rule by creating drag in other ways. One is to wear a pair of cut-off tights underneath your swimsuit. Another is to wear every swimsuit you’ve ever owned since you were 12, one on top of the other. Both methods make for rather ridiculous fashion statements.

When I go to a meet, I begin by doing something that is ironically called a warm-up. For some strange reason, this consists of jumping into water that is so cold it almost freezes the blood in my veins. Then, because the rest of my team is packed into one lane with me, I have to swim as fast and as hard as I possibly can. It is probably one of the most stressful situations I’ve ever encountered. The water churns so hard and fast it’s impossible to see more than a foot ahead. I can practically hear the theme from “Jaws.”

Stopping to catch my breath or try to relax is absolutely out of the question because there are at least a dozen people who actually know how to swim chasing me down the lane. Finally, someone tells me I’m done and I crawl out of the water and try to catch my breath before I have to race.

Let me clarify that although this column is strictly humorous, all of it is absolutely true. I feel the swimming experience is worth it when I finally finish my ridiculously long race, look up at the scoreboard see I have beaten my personal record.

Rachel Kenley is a junior at Palmer High School.