At 2:30 every afternoon, Pepperdine’s swimming pool is a glistening bath of blue movement, girls in suits bobbing through the water, faces cinched by goggles.
Since the beginning of October, only one thing is missing: bellybuttons.
In a move to swathe those little pockets of tummy in fabric, the athletic department banned the wearing of two-piece bathing suits during swim practice for the women’s swimming and diving teams for consistency and modesty, Director of Athletics Steve Potts said.
The decision resulted primarily from uniform restrictions that arose from the introduction of the women’s sand volleyball team last spring, Potts said.
The administration prohibited volleyball players from wearing two-piece suits and recently chose to apply the same restriction to the women’s swimming and diving teams.
“Once we decided to sponsor sand volleyball, we decided as an institution that we would wear one-piece uniforms,” Potts said. “It’s really a matter of consistency. We always want to make sure that our athletes are representing Pepperdine appropriately.”
The university’s religious affiliation did influence the athletic department’s original decision to pursue a more modest uniform.
“We are different; we intend to be different; we love the fact that we’re different,” Potts said. “Making sure that we are consistent with Pepperdine’s Christian mission is very important to us.”
The female swimmers have been able to wear two-piece suits to practice in previous years, senior Shannon Adkins said in an email. This summer, she organized the team in purchasing two-piece athletic suits from Jolyn Clothing Co., an organization whose website offers a selection of 44 color choices for every two-piece. Each girl spent $45 on the swimsuit.
“This is something we did last year as well, but as a smaller team I think it went unnoticed, so we were under the impression that it was OK to do it again this year,” Adkins said. “It is unfortunate that we already paid for these suits and will not be able to get the use out of them that we would like to.”
Freshman swimmer Allison Naasz, who chose sunkist and electric blue for her bathing suit colors, said she disagreed with the new policy because the two-piece suits are not immodest.
“Swimming is a sport — it’s not like we’re walking around the campus parading our bodies,” Naasz said. “They’re athletic swimsuits.”
The athletic department p u r c h a s e d two Nike one-piece bathing suits for the swimmers at the beginning of the season to be worn during practice, freshman Katie Giacobbe said. Now the department is in the process of purchasing a third suit for the swimmers, who typically practice twice a day.
“I understand where Pepperdine is coming from in banning the two pieces — they want us to practice in uniform like most other teams do,” Adkins said. “Also, we do attend a private school that can make decisions such as this one.”
President Andrew K. Benton and both swim coaches declined to comment on the record, and Seaver Dean Rick Marrs said in an email that he did not know about the policy change until now.
An investigation into swimsuit policies finds Pepperdine relatively in the middle when compared with other universities in the U.S. affiliated with the Churches of Christ and with private schools in Southern California.
Although Pepperdine’s sister schools Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas and Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. do not compete in the sport of swimming, both have dress code restrictions for the student body.
Among the private universities with competitive swim teams in Southern California, Pepperdine’s policies fall between those adopted by California Baptist University and Biola University, which do not allow recreational swimmers or athletes to wear two-piece bathing suits on campus, and those adopted by Loyola Marymount University, whose team wears the two-piece bathing suits Pepperdine swimmers had purchased before the ban.
