Each year the swim team completes rituals to strengthen their unity and team spirit. These traditions show the devotion swimmers have for their team. “One of my favorite traditions is when the swim team gets to bleach and shave their hair,” said junior swimmer Tommy Hackley. 

“I mostly enjoy the bleaching part because most people on the team do it together and so it’s a great team bonding experience.”

  Walking in the halls, you may notice a few bald heads mixed in with the crowd of students. When a male student is seen with bright yellow hair or no hair at all, it’s known that he’s a swimmer.

There’s also a reason for the long-lasting tradition. Sophomore swimmer Nick Torre said that the “whole bleach and shave topic is you grow your hair out all season, so that it gets long and is resisting you in the water.”

“So you start training with long hair and racing with long hair. Then, when you finally go bald and shave, you will be flying through the water since there is not as much resistance as you would have with a full head of hair,” he said.

In spite of that, there are multiple traditions that students outside of the swim teams are not aware of.

Hackley added that there are “other countless swimming traditions.”

“One of them is throwing goggles from the middle of the pool and trying to land them on the starting blocks after every practice,” he said.

Another tradition is competing to see who can decorate the locker room the best.

Boys swim coach Joshua Runkle said, “I think my favorite tradition at NT is when we put TED on all our t-shirts. It’s to honor former swimmer Ted Mullin, who passed away from cancer. His family started a foundation at the University of Chicago that is working on treatments and potential cures for Sarcoma.”

Alongside the boys’ swim team, the girls’ swim teams have traditions of their own.

“Some of the big traditions are when the seniors go to the freshmen girls’ houses in the morning to wake them up. Other ones are when we all get together decorate the locker room for senior night. We also do this thing before our big meets where we all go and get spray tans before the event occurs,” Junior swimmer Belle Zelazny said.

Zelazny explained, “Although it is also really fun to act upon these traditions, the core reason behind all of them is simply to have some quality bonding time.”

Despite the differences in traditions between the swim teams, the root reason for all of them is to  create bonds.

“All these traditions are very enjoyable and allow us to bond more and more as a team. Spending time together allows us to get to know each other and then, a brotherhood is created,” senior swimmer Eric Chiu said.