Godby student swimmers jump head-first into the sport in spite of systemic roadblocks
When Shania Brown transferred to Godby High School two years ago, she wasn’t expecting to join a sport.
“I was like, I need to get involved in something,” Brown, 18, said. “And I saw this loud Cuban lady. She was like ‘can you swim?’ and I said ‘yes.’ And that’s where it started.”
That was swim coach and Godby chemistry teacher Emily Gwin.
Every day after the last bell rings, Gwin teaches 11 students – 10 girls and one boy – how to dive, how to do a flip turn and what it means to be part of a close-knit family.
Godby is historically known for its football and basketball, having won state championships in each sport.
Their swim team, however, struggles with membership.
But that doesn’t stop Gwin and her Godby students from jumping head first into the sport. The team practices every day at the Jack L. McLean Community Center pool alongside Rickards and Lincoln High School students.
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“This has given some of my students, who I saw being shy when they first came to me, open up and find friendship and community and a place to be after school,” Gwin said.
Swimming is a predominantly white sport. Using a survey with approximately 70% participation, USA Swimming reports that less than 2% of its 2021 registered, year-round swimmers are Black. Hispanic or Latino swimmers made up just over 3% of the respondents. In 2021, Black swimmers make up 2% of those who competitively swim in college, according to NCAA demographics data.
Gwin's students are predominantly Black and brown and many live in the 32304 ZIP code, which has been dubbed the poorest ZIP code in the state and where the majority of homicides in Tallahassee took place between 2015 and 2020, according to the Leon County Sheriff’s Office.
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Out of the five biggest Tallahassee public high schools, Godby, which sits in 32304, has the most economically disadvantaged students at 59%, according to Florida Department of Education data.
“Swimming is a very privileged sport,” Gwin said. “We’re not a big team, and we can’t grow because of all these other roadblocks.”
A legacy of the Dade Street Dolphins
Historically in the U.S., Black communities were left out of public swimming opportunities. Racist laws enforced by police during segregation kept Black people from swimming in white pools, community centers and public beaches. After integration, many cities decided to just shut pools down rather than let Black people in, including Tallahassee.
"Now it becomes a commodity who can afford water and swim and safety lessons," said Leland Brown, program director of diversity, equity and inclusion with USA Swimming.
Decades of racist policies have led to a deadly result: Black children are three times more likely to drown than white children, according to the YMCA.
That 60-something years of Jim Crow laws left Black children behind.
"The myths come up, right, that we don't swim. The myths come up that we can't swim. The myths come up that this sport...doesn't belong to our community," Leland Brown said.
In Tallahassee, the only pool Black residents could swim in was the Robinson Trueblood Swimming Pool on Dade Street, which was built in response to protests at white pools.
Bishop Holifield, 76, was a member of the first Black swim team, the Dade Street Dolphins. He said not only did he learn how to swim, he also learned lifeguard techniques.
“We reduced drownings in the Black community,” he said.
During the summers of 1964-67, the city commission closed public swimming pools to avoid integrating them, according to Democrat archives.
Holifield, a retired general counsel at Florida A&M University who was a leader during Tallahassee’s civil rights movement, fought to reopen the pools.
He and other members of the Black community campaigned and held a straw poll to determine whether or not the people of Tallahassee wanted to reopen the pools. A majority did.
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Holifield’s children grew up swimming in those integrated pools, and he believes children should take advantage of learning how to become strong swimmers.
He remembers swimming up to three times a day during the summer at the Dade Street pool.
“It’s a healthy outlet,” he said. “Everybody needs to know how to swim.”
The long haul to practice in donated or hand-me-down suits
The Godby team practices at 3:30 p.m. at the Jack McLean pool, Monday through Friday, and share the eight-lane pool with Rickards and Lincoln.
The Rickards team is predominately Black and brown as well, but the pool is steps from Rickards' campus. It takes the Godby team at least 20 minutes to travel the 7.2 miles to the pool.
Usually Gwin drives the van from Godby, with 11 students in tow, to the southside of town.
But on a warm fall Wednesday, the vans were being used by the volleyball team, so English teacher and assistant swim coach Ashley Green and Gwin packed seven students in their cars and drove to Jack McLean themselves. At 3:25 p.m., the girls jumped out in the parking lot, already in their swimsuits, and began to stretch.
The only requirement to join the team is that they can paddle in the deep end. At the beginning of the season, some of her kids struggle to even get to the end of the pool and back.
“They've had to work harder than those who might have been swimming in a club team, who might have the means to pay to swim year round,” Gwin said.
Many of the team members only have one suit, Gwin said. Shania Brown’s suit was donated. Another student wears a hand-me-down one-piece from Gwin. The lone boy on the team was wearing standard swim trunks until a couple of weeks ago when someone donated a pair of spandex swim shorts, also known as jammers.
In his new swimsuit, he dropped 17 seconds off his breast stroke.
Dues are $50, which includes $20 for gas, $10 for meals and $15 for a shirt. The warm-ups are an extra $50, and if students want to go to the invitational meet in Panama City, it's another $50.
Gwin doesn’t charge the students the full price for the warm-up pants and jackets. The team gets money from the district to buy swim caps, goggles and fees for swim meets, but the money doesn’t cover the swimsuit because that’s something the student keeps.
The team holds fundraisers throughout the season to make up the cost and to pay for snacks, gas money, activities and practice equipment, like kickboards.
During practice, Gwin jogs up and down the side of the pool, cheering on her students.
That afternoon, she was teaching Carmen Zacchi, 15, a new drill to practice her backstroke.
Zacchi questioned whether she could do it.
"But what if I die?" she asked.
"You're not going to die," Gwin responded.
"But what if the water goes up my nose?" Zacchi asked again.
"Then it goes up your nose," Gwin said.
She loves her students, but she’s tough with them, too. That day one of her students didn’t follow the school dress code, so Gwin made her do an extra workout in between laps.
Her students are dedicated.
The swim team has eight meets throughout the two-and-a-half month season in the fall and compete against all the schools in the school district, plus some private schools and some out of district schools.
“The heart that these kids have is just phenomenal to me,” she said.
Creating experiences
Shania Brown graduates this year. She doesn’t know what she wants to major in, let alone whether to go to FSU or FAMU.
But she does know how much swimming competitively has helped her.
She couldn’t afford the fee to swim her first year, but now she’s swimming the individual medley event, which is butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle in 200 meters.
“It was such an accomplishment for me, like I beat myself up. I was so nervous,” she said.
Brown is an advocate, not just for her teammates, but for other people who look like her, who may want to join the sport but maybe feel like they can’t or don’t belong.
The team is currently fundraising and selling chocolate bars.
“Your money isn’t just money,” she added. “It buys us power. It buys us boards, it buys us fins. It literally creates an opportunity for underrepresented people…your money does so much more than just buy supplies. It creates experiences.”
How to donate to the Godby swim team
Contact Ana Goñi-Lessan at AGoniLessan@tallahassee.com and follow her on Twitter @goni_lessan.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Godby High School swim team stays afloat with hard work
