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?
Former Member
The kid complaining would hate my YMCA. We have a guy who does naked sit-ups on the locker room floor. Talk about a freak show. If you are doing naked sit-ups, you better be in your home.
I agree with the others. Tell that kid to put his purse away and quit complaining.
Our Masters workouts in the morning (particularly in the summer) overlap with the USAS team. I swim with the Masters and sit on the Board of Directors of the club team (last 4-5 years). This issue has never come up.
IMHO, this seems odd since kids and adults would experience changing together at virtually any pool, YMCA, health club, etc.
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...
This is an interesting topic, I like to hear how everyone feels about this subject.
If I'm in a locker room or bay alone I do little to nothing to protect my modesty (or lack there-of). If there are teen-agers or kids younger I try to cover as much as possible with my towel. I don't go to extreme lengths but I cover as much as I reasonably can without being a contortionist. I have never felt like the teens pay any attention at all. I will say that children 5 and younger tend to stand and stare in locker rooms. I teach at a kindergarten-5th grade elementary school and I would feel very awkward if a kindergartner got a glimpse of me in the buff. :angel:
When I was a kid on age-group teams (late 60's - mid=70's) we were pretty uninhibited in the locker-room so I;m always surprised to see how overly modest today's kids are...it cracks me up. That said, since I work and work-out in the town where I live, I don't go out of my way to cover up when I'm changing at the Y, but I do stay on the alert since I really, really, really don't want to come face to face with a student (I teach high school) when I'm in the buff.
The Y has an "18 and over only" policy in the Women's locker room, so it would only be seniors I'd run into, but still....turning 18 isn't all scratch tickets and cigarettes - sometimes you see your English teacher in your locker room...ewwwwww!
I agree this goes on anywhere you swim.
Perhaps they could string up some curtains to separate the the sides of the locker room.
I figure if everyone uses their towel as best they can it's not that big of a deal. What exactly are the kids afraid the master's are going to do?
It sounds to me like someone on the board is making a big deal out of nothing!
This is the reason why I always wear my suit 24/7. No need to become naked, the suits already on.
I do however remove it (very breifly) to replace with a fresh brief.
Changing times overlap at our pool, and our locker-rooms are very small. There has never been a problem; this is a team with 800+ members (maybe 30-40 masters swimmers).
It is a little bit of an odd situation because there is no age limit on USAS-S registration, so the distinction with "masters" is a little blurred. I am a member of USAS-S and so are swimshark and Patrick, and we are all in our 40s. Some of us train with age-groupers at times, too. Lisa Bennett is a member at 55 and regularly swims in "kids" meets.
The kids definitely do things differently. Most (masters) swimmers I know remove their suit while showering to rinse it out. The kids never do this. They just don't walk around the locker room naked like masters swimmers seem to have little problem with.
I do remember when I was in high school and we used to do morning workouts in the summer at Michigan State University we always commented about the "creepy old guys" in the locker room walking around naked. Thinking back these creepy old guys were just behaving exactly as I tend to now!
The bottom line is it's a locker room. Deal with it. I can imagine the kids laughing at us about our lack of modesty, but it's sort of funny to think someone would actually complain about it. Buck up kid!
We have an overlap as well with the one billion USAS swimmers at our club. The kids will go through unnatural gyrations to change without exposing themselves. While us old geezers are much less modest I will admit I try to be aware of when there are a ton of kids in the locker room and maybe be more discreet than normal. I kind of look at it as kids come first at our club and I don't need to incur any unneeded hassle, although there is a really good relationship between the kids and USMS swimmers.
