Swim Teams, the DNC, Men & Women

Friday Feelings about Swim Teams, Growing Up, and Equality

As I kicked across my sparkling pool on a beautiful end-of-summer Friday morning, after watching the DNC all week and attending a Women in Sports Night at our AAA Baseball Game last night, a memory arose I had forgotten. It might have started my feminist approach to supporting women in sports, equality, and life.

Due to a lack of funds to support a Girl’s Swim team in 1978 when I was in 8th grade, our school allowed girls to join the Boy’s Swim team, practicing and competing with them for the year. Four of us decided we could work out and compete as hard as the guys in our grade, so we joined.

Having specific sex assigned bathrooms, was the only place we were separated from our male peers. We practiced with them in common lanes, swam against them in practices, had mixed relays at meets, and traveled on the same bus. They didn’t care, and we didn’t care. It was fun as a teenager to be near the opposite sex, honestly.

The four of us never felt weird, intimidated, or different sharing the experience with them. It might be one of the events that formed my mindset of equality at a tender age. Their acceptance of us, our acceptance of them, and our joint team mindset.

Although I was not raised with brothers, I had male cousins who would let me compete with them in basketball, baseball, diving competitions, and skiing down black diamond slopes. They didn’t care I was a girl. They let me join in and their friends were that way too. Sometimes I wonder if it was just the mindset of the late 70’s or the way our family raised us. There were ten grandchildren total – five girls and five guys – equal at the dinner table, in love and affection from our grandparents, and on the playing field. I never thought I didn’t belong where men were because of this.

I always believed women belonged in sports. As I aged, I wanted to even the playing field for girls and women, and do. It took swimming in my pool today, the rise of women at the DNC, and possibly electing the first female President, and the importance of both men and women, giving each other a chance to live, compete, and ascend in life, sports, and politics.