Our coach also coaches age-group swimmers. He told me that USA Swimming no longer allows athletes to shave at meets (in the locker rooms or showers).
The age-group team no longer allows it when they travel - not even in the hotel bathrooms. So the kids have to shave down before they leave home.
Anna Lea
It's forbidden on-site in high school too. Do it, get caught, and you just earned your great shave and taper a DQ from further competition. My guess is that they didn't like the kids who screwed up bleeding on deck, or the mess at the facility.
When I was 13 or 14 about ten years back, I remember my coach had a group meeting about planning to shave for the senior (or 14&U AG) champ meet, and all it entailed, and that if we didn't want to do so (or sit through the talk), we should change to get ready on practice for deck. I was the only person to forego the meeting--granted, having a realistic idea that when I typically finished 42 out of 42 in your events, I didn't have many taper/shave meets to go to.
Never having shaved in my shorter career (I'm sure some of you all been doing shave & tapers for more years than I've been around!), I can't come up with more than one or maybe two situations where I'd do so, and it's tough to say if I'll ever satisfy the one that would definitely require the shave. The closest I come is putting on a cap for meets, which I don't do for practice, and didn't do in the earliest years of my swimming years. It certainly feels faster, but my data points are too few to say for certain (most of my meets over my years show time drops because I'd go to so few, and so the incremental improvement had to show up some time).
Patrick King
Our coach also coaches age-group swimmers. He told me that USA Swimming no longer allows athletes to shave at meets (in the locker rooms or showers).
The age-group team no longer allows it when they travel - not even in the hotel bathrooms. So the kids have to shave down before they leave home.
Anna Lea
It's forbidden on-site in high school too. Do it, get caught, and you just earned your great shave and taper a DQ from further competition. My guess is that they didn't like the kids who screwed up bleeding on deck, or the mess at the facility.
When I was 13 or 14 about ten years back, I remember my coach had a group meeting about planning to shave for the senior (or 14&U AG) champ meet, and all it entailed, and that if we didn't want to do so (or sit through the talk), we should change to get ready on practice for deck. I was the only person to forego the meeting--granted, having a realistic idea that when I typically finished 42 out of 42 in your events, I didn't have many taper/shave meets to go to.
Never having shaved in my shorter career (I'm sure some of you all been doing shave & tapers for more years than I've been around!), I can't come up with more than one or maybe two situations where I'd do so, and it's tough to say if I'll ever satisfy the one that would definitely require the shave. The closest I come is putting on a cap for meets, which I don't do for practice, and didn't do in the earliest years of my swimming years. It certainly feels faster, but my data points are too few to say for certain (most of my meets over my years show time drops because I'd go to so few, and so the incremental improvement had to show up some time).
Patrick King
