[SwimTeamSpeedo]

The bell rang at 2:40PM. It couldn’t have come soon enough for the guys on the swim team. By the end of the last class of the day, they were all about to burst out of their bodies with excitement over the first meet of the season. It was a regional meet at Gulf Coast High, a 45 minute bus ride. The bus would leave exactly at 2:45. It would arrive at 3:30 at the meet host school, giving the guys a short thirty minutes to get ready for the meet, which started promptly at 4.

“Go, go go,” said Nick to Jimmy as they dashed from Algebra class to the locker room. The two guys rushed from the farthest corner of the school to the pool locker room. They grabbed their swim bags and darted out the door.

“I gotta take a piss,” Jimmy said as they darted from the locker room.

“Hold it dude, no time.” Nick replied.

“I can’t,” jimmy shouted back as he bee lined to the urinals. He quickly unbuttoned his jeans, yanking himself out the fly and letting his body free of what seemed like a gallon of liquid.

“Damn, at least you are well hydrated,” Nick teased. “Guess you couldn’t hold it.” he laughed.

The guys got on the bus and grabbed a seat six back from the front. It was a dual meet, so the bus was loaded with both teams. Bryan was sitting with Stephanie, the blossoming relationship was clearly going well.

“That was funny what you guys did at the rally,” Stephanie was saying to Bryan as the guys grabbed the seat in front. “You sure did surprise everyone.”

“Yeah, coach was pretty upset about it.” Bryan replied.

“How come?” Steph asked. “We all thought it was fun.”

“Guess he was not happy about us striping to our swimsuits. He said it was not the place for that.” Nick chimed in.

“Yeah, I guess our swimsuits are only for the pool.” Jimmy added.

“Not like you were naked. If we go to meets we see you in the same suits. Heck the basketball team wears their shorts.” Steph responded. “It’s not like you were naked.”

“Pretty close,” one of the other girls on the team interrupted. “I mean it was cute, but…” she did not finish.

The guys and girls got themselves all psyched up fro the meet. They started doing some cheers on the way, carrying on like a team that was ready to show they were the dominant swimmers in the pool. The enthusiasm was contagious, electrified. It was funny how a bunch of normally too cool for cheers athletes became caught up in the excitement of the chants and rhymes of cheering. They were all young adults acting like pre-teens. It was a fun display of the fun of youth.

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“Okay guys, we got no time. We need to dash in, get in the showers and wash these letters off our chests,” the team captain said. “Go as fast as you can. Coach wants all of us on deck by quarter of. First event swimmers in the warm up as soon as we get there. The bus was pulling in the Parking lot of Gulf Coast High’s amazing athletics complex. The school was new, just two years old. The pool was a full fifty meter outdoor pool, a rare find at the high school level. The school reeked of affluence, a product of its setting in a wealthy beach town where the average home sold for over half a million, and the beachfront ones were well in the millions.

As soon as the bus stopped, the swimmers darted from the bus. The guys dashed to the locker room, ripping off their shorts as they ran. The bright black and red letters still emblazoned on their muscular, defined chests. Within seconds, every guy had shed all of his clothing and were in the showers. They lathered up their chests with the soap, scrubbing away at the letters. The red outlines quickly rinsed away, the result of the dry erase markers they had used. That was were the easy ran out.

“Any of you guys getting the black off?” called out one of the swimmers. “Mine are not washing off at all.”

“My red is off, but I can’t get the black off,” came a reply.

“Me too,” answered another.

“What the hell?” whimpered Bryan. “This is not good.”

After five minutes the best that had happened was some of the guys had at least faded the color a slight bit, but the black letters were still clear as ever.

“We are screwed,” said Jimmy.

Bryan ran from the shower and quickly put on his swimsuit. An “O” proudly displayed on his chest. He shot out to the pool deck and looked around for Stephanie. Spotting her, he ran over. “Steph, how do you get make up off. We can’t get the letters to wash off.” Bryan asked her frantically. “You gotta help.”

“What did you guys use?” she asked.

“I don’t know, I think they were those thick Sharpie markers, you know, the fat ones.”

“You guys didn’t use body paint?” she asked.

“What is body paint?” Bryan asked. “Forget it, we don’t have time. What do we do.”

“It’s gonna take lots of work to get those off if you did use Sharpies. Those are permanent.”

“Crap! Coach is gonna be really mad now,” Bryan responded. “Damn it!”

It was already quarter of when Bryan went back in to the locker room. “Any luck?” he asked.

“Not much,” one of the guys replied. “I think we are stuck.”

The guys finally headed out, their wet bodies glistening from the showers, their white and blue swimsuits wet and clinging to them. They were certainly the most muscular looking team of the guys at the meet, a direct result of coach’s weight workouts. None of that mattered, though. All that everyone saw was a group of guys with big black letters on their chests.

Coach looked up as the guys walked toward him A shocked look came over his face. “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, boys, you need to go get those letters washed off, and right now!” Coach ordered.

“We tried, coach. They won’t come off. We did everything!” the team captain responded. Coach stared at the young man standing there is a big old "S" on his chest, directly above his tight and showy swimsuit. Coach just glared at the handsome young man.

“Oh this is just great,” Coach replied. He turned and looked away from the team. Part of him wanted to laugh at their youthful ignorance of using real markers. The other part of him contemplated how to deal with the situation. His first concern was whether there was any penalty for wearing body decorations to a meet. The guys looked at each other, confused as to what was coming next.

The girls team took it all in, as did a few of the other teams. "Boys will be boys" one of the young ladies remarked. A wave a laughter took over.

No one was sure what the next move should be.