Personal Narrative: My Swim Team

My swim team has an honored tradition of shaving their heads the night before the district swim meet. Districts is by far the biggest meet of the year where all swimmers attempt to break personal records and qualify for state. This shaving of the heads promises a possible time drop of maybe one tenth of a second and also builds a sense of team unity. In 2013, my freshman year of high school, I refused to partake in this sacred ritual.
Throughout the season, I knew that the entire team expected me to shave my head. Every varsity swimmer had gotten their heads shaved in previous years and were planning on doing so again. I, a simple freshman, would not be the detriment to their coordinating hairstyles. Multiple teammates reinforced this expectation by making jokes about what I would look like without the mop of hair that was shielding my large forehead. I always forced laughter or made noises of complaint in response but never expressed my legitimate horror of parting with my hair. …show more content…
Baldness would result in months of unhappy ugliness. Not that baldness is a bad look on everyone, I just can’t pull it off. 2. I would (hopefully) be forgiven for this mutinous crime. Keeping my hair seemed to me a pretty mild offense. 3. Wearing a swim cap has the exact same effect of a shaved head. The entire tradition of head shaving seemed illogical when the temporary baldness of a swim cap would suffice. Even after I confessed to my teammates and coaches that I would not be participating, everyone assumed they would change my mind. Or they would hold me down and shave my head as they did to a freshman the previous year. Either way, I refused to be controlled by others’ senseless demands or by illegal