A Swimmer-Winner-Woman

When Trophies Predict the Future

Hi Friends, Girls need tangible, three-dimensional representations of the women they hope to become. For me, these inspiring icons appeared in the form of swimming trophies.

Throughout my childhood, I amassed dozens of swimming trophies by placing first, second or third in races for age groups ranging from six-and-unders to sixteen-and-unders. To me, these treasures were not just pedestals topped with swim-suited women poised in the racing-start position. They predicted and promised my future.

This was the sixties and early seventies, before A League of Their Own and Nyad. Before college scholarships and professional sports for women. Before public statues of tennis greats Serena and Venus William and basketball coaches Dawn Staley and Pat Summitt. But we had trophies.

Below, you can see my friend “Gernie,” left (a nickname that stuck), and me (middle) showing a trophy to my older sister, Carol. See how all three of us are touching it? By this age, about 12, I owned dozens of trophies. Yet each figurine became a valued possession: gleaming, beautiful, worthy of conversation and caresses.

I was not a great swimmer. Gernie and I were fast fish in the slow pond of Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. We teamed up with Barb and Jean for relays. But these trophies had a clear purpose: Foretelling our future. They had a clear place: aloft. Already high on their pedestals, I lifted them higher in my bedroom.

Here, if you look to the upper right, past the “cool” STOP sign and mobiles of pointing hands and eyeballs, you’ll see a tribe of trophies on the highest shelf: five golden angels watching over Gernie and me as we play Monopoly in our tank suits on my bed. (I’m in the striped Speedo, with the hypermobile knee facing backward. Not a photogenic day, but as you’ll see, being “the fairest of them all” was not my goal.)

Another two trophies are one row down. Behind me, not visible here, was a bookcase where all the other trophies resided. As I moved around my room, shared the space with friends, and rested at night, I was surrounded by strong female icons.

What was their prediction?

When you become a woman, you will still be a swimmer and a winner. A swimmer-winner-woman.

The trophies had breasts long before I did. They offered a mirror vastly superior to Snow White’s mirror on the wall. (“Who’s the fairest of them all?”)

You’ll have to take my word for it, but that’s a yellow-cloaked Snow White huddled in the far right corner on the lowest large shelf. Someone had tried to persuade me that vanity and prince-capture should be my priorities.

The trophies promised that I could ignore Snow White. That there was room in the world for athletic, ambitious, competitive girls. That as I grew, I could stay balanced on my own two feet. I could face forward. I could dive into whatever waters I chose. I could adopt the shape of these little goddesses. Strong. Woman. Athlete.

Fortunately, I believed them. As did Mom, a strong woman athlete herself, who drove Gernie and me to all those swim meets and carefully rubber-cemented each photo into the family album so I could savor them now, and share them with you.

Thanks to Carolyn Stone (“Gernie”) for granting permission to tell this story.
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