I'm a board member for our swim club.
Last nite there was mention of a complaint from a senior high school swimmer who was uncomfortable with using a locker room with the adult master swimmers. We practice at the same time a few days out of the week.
This became an bigger issue last nite because we have a desire to run USA swimming at the same time as a few masters sessions in the evening and our coach voiced concern about everyone using the locker room at the same time and kids being uncomfortable.
Does your club run practices at the same time?
Have you run into issues like this?
How did you handle/manage locker room time?
In high school I swam for the YMCA team. Our YMCA had a huge pool (10-12 lanes) and there was both master swimming and "open" swimming going on at the same time as our practices. Everyone from very senior adults to very young children were in the locker room at the same time. I don't think any of us really minded, though the adults would typically take nekked showers, which was something us kids never did--we wore our swimsuits for post-workout showers (if we took them at all--hey! we were kids!).
All was good until my senior year when it was discovered that some seriously perverted dude was secretly videotaping the boys in the locker room while they changed. Many kids on my team (including me) were "victims" of this. I don't think I ever noticed the guy and I don't think anybody else did either. But the guy was caught and our coach had to go in and identify the kids on the tape and we all got a call from the police. As it turns out I was 18 at the time (being a senior and all) and apparently it wasn't illegal back then to film adults in locker rooms so I was not one of the official victims in the trial (which was good--I got notified and then never heard anything else about it).
So yeah, there are perverts out there and now that I have my own children I can't say I'm the biggest fan of the "man up" solution. But I'm also not a fan of separate lockers (too expensive) or separate swim times (too inconvenient) so "man up" seems like the only solution. That plus teaching my kids to be on the alert for perverts and to report them to parents or coaches...
In high school I swam for the YMCA team. Our YMCA had a huge pool (10-12 lanes) and there was both master swimming and "open" swimming going on at the same time as our practices. Everyone from very senior adults to very young children were in the locker room at the same time. I don't think any of us really minded, though the adults would typically take nekked showers, which was something us kids never did--we wore our swimsuits for post-workout showers (if we took them at all--hey! we were kids!).
All was good until my senior year when it was discovered that some seriously perverted dude was secretly videotaping the boys in the locker room while they changed. Many kids on my team (including me) were "victims" of this. I don't think I ever noticed the guy and I don't think anybody else did either. But the guy was caught and our coach had to go in and identify the kids on the tape and we all got a call from the police. As it turns out I was 18 at the time (being a senior and all) and apparently it wasn't illegal back then to film adults in locker rooms so I was not one of the official victims in the trial (which was good--I got notified and then never heard anything else about it).
So yeah, there are perverts out there and now that I have my own children I can't say I'm the biggest fan of the "man up" solution. But I'm also not a fan of separate lockers (too expensive) or separate swim times (too inconvenient) so "man up" seems like the only solution. That plus teaching my kids to be on the alert for perverts and to report them to parents or coaches...
